RESEARCH ARTICLE


Work Disability in Scleroderma is Greater than in Rheumatoid Arthritis and is Predicted by High HAQ Scores



Janine M Ouimet, Janet E Pope*, Iris Gutmanis , John Koval
Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2008
Volume: 2
First Page: 44
Last Page: 52
Publisher ID: TORJ-2-44
DOI: 10.2174/1874312900802010044

Article History:

Received Date: 22/8/2008
Revision Received Date: 29/8/2008
Acceptance Date: 20/9/2008
Electronic publication date: 23/9/2008
Collection year: 2008

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Creative Commons License
© Ouimet et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at St. Joseph’s Health Care, 268 Grosvenor Street, London, Ontario, N6A 4V2, Canada; E-mail: janet.pope@sjhc.london.on.ca


Abstract

Objectives

To estimate the frequency of work disability (WD) in a cohort of patients with Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) vs an internal control group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with a known high frequency of WD; and to investigate the association between WD and other factors including Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI) scores, HAQ pain, age, sex, disease duration and education level.

Methods

Cross-sectional data on WD status were obtained from a questionnaire sent to all SSc (n = 35 limited [lcSSc], 26 diffuse [dcSSc]) and a subset of RA patients (n=104) from a rheumatology practice. WD data, HAQ-DI scores, and demographic/clinical features (age, sex, high school education, disease duration and SSc disease subtype [dcSSc vs lcSSc]) were recorded.

Results

The proportion with WD was 0.56 in SSc (95% CI: 0.43-0.68) vs 0.35 in RA (95% CI: 0.25-0.44), p= 0.009. HAQ-DI scores were significantly higher in work-disabled SSc and RA patients vs those who were employed (p=0.0001, and p <0.0001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that higher HAQ-DI scores (β=1.78, p <0.001), disease type (dcSSc, lcSSc, RA) (β=1.32 for dcSSc, p=0.032), and self-reported disease duration (β=0.04, p=0.042) were significantly associated with WD (R2=0.311). Adding a work-related factor (self-reported physically demanding work) improved the regression model (R2=0.346) and strengthened the HAQ-DI (β=1.86, p <0.001) and lcSSc (β=1.24, p=0.024) coefficients.

Conclusion

The frequency of WD in SSc was high and was greater than in RA. SSc (and dcSSc) had significantly more WD than RA. The HAQ-DI was strongly associated with WD in SSc

Keywords: Scleroderma, systemic sclerosis, work disability, health assessment questionnaire.