Sarcouncil Journal of Medical Sciences

Abstract: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes inflammation and progressive disability in the joints with detrimental effects on the quality of life (QoL) of patients. Knowing the impact and its predictors will help to inform clinical management and improve outcomes for patients where This meta-analysis aimed to quantify existing evidence on the effect of RA on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), explore predictors of the effect, and synthesize clinical implications where a comprehensive literature search was performed across major databases, including PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus, to identify meta-analyses or high-quality studies published within the last 10 years that examined QoL in adults with RA. Inclusion criteria focused on studies that examined QoL using established and validated instruments (SF-36 and HAQ) which Data extraction involved studying the aim, participant characteristics, methods, QoL findings, and the authors' conclusions and Quality assessment tools ensured characterized the soundness of the methodology in the included studies however meta-analytic model was performed to address heterogeneity with subgroup and sensitivity analyses performed to examine demographic and clinical moderators as well as consistently identified that RA patients had significantly lower QoL than healthy controls, especially in the physical functioning areas with SF-36 physical summary scores of 34 and moderate influence on mental health components (scores = 46). The major factors contributing to impairment in quality of life included age, female sex, disease duration, and disease activity measured by DAS28 in addition to It has been established in RA, that psychologicial comorbidities, i.e., depression and anxiety will further impact on quality of life, therefore Latent profile analysis showed the presence of sub-groups of patients each with different levels of QoL severity, which was influenced primarily by physical function and education level. Intervention-type studies highlight the positive impacts of biologic therapies, physical activity, and multidisciplinary care for improving QoL indicators. These findings highlight the heterogeneous and multi-dimensional impairment experienced in QoL in RA.