A study on characteristics of rheumatoid arthritis patients achieving remission in depression with 6 months of bDMARDs treatment

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the relationship between baseline factors and depression remission aftera 6-month biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) treatment in rheumatoidarthritis (RA) patients.Methods: The study was conducted in 152 RA patients treated with bDMARDs. The following patient’scharacteristics were studied: gender, age, disease duration, baseline prednisolone dosage, and serummatrix metalloproteinase3 (MMP3) levels. For assessment, we used the simple disease activity index(SDAI) for RA disease activity, Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI) for activitiesof daily living (ADL), Short Form-36 for nonspecific health-related quality of life (QOL), and HamiltonDepression Rating Scale (HAM-D) scores for the depression status. Depressed remission was clarifiedusing HAM-D ≤7 after 6 months of treatment. The patients were divided into two groups accordingto the presence or absence of depression, and a retrospective study was conducted.Results: Based on binominal logistic analyses, RA patients’ with depression remission (n=124) com-pared to those without depression remission (n=28) had a younger age (p=0.0045, odd ratio: 0.94,95% confidence interval [CI]:0.8-0.98), female sex (p=0.021, odd ratio:0.21, 95% CI:0.054-0.79), and low-er HAM-D scores (p=0.0073, odd ratio:0.85, 95% CI:0.76-0.96)Conclusion: It was proposed that RA patients who are females, younger in age, and have lower de-pressed scores at baseline can achieve a depression remission status with the bDMARDs treatment.