Physical activity assessment in rheumatoid arthritis: a 120-patient cross-sectional study

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease frequently associated with comorbidities such as cardiovascular diseases. RA patients are more prone to physical inactivity than the general population.

Our study aimed to evaluate physical activity (PA) in patients with RA and to assess barriers that influence it in RA characteristics.

This was a cross sectional study of 120 RA patients. Comorbidities, patients' characteristics, disease activity, function assessed by Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), severity parameters, and extra-articular manifestations were assessed. PA was evaluated with the Short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ-S). Factors influencing PA were analyzed.

Mean age was 56.1±10.1 years and sex-ratio was 0.14. Screening for comorbidities showed that 30.7% of patients had hypertension, 18.4% had diabetes, and 71.1% were obese or overweight. Moderate to high disease activity was found in 55.6% of patients. Mean HAQ was 0.9±0.6. Evaluation of PA revealed that mean continuous IPAQ-S was 4226.02±4703 MET-min per week [0-24276]. Physical activity level (categorical IPAQ-S) was low in 24.2% of patients, moderate in 30.8%, and high in 45%. Continuous IPAQ-S was negatively correlated with age (r=-0.18,p=0.045), age of disease onset (r=-0.18,p=0.049), and HAQ (r=-0.25,p=0.01). Besides, categorical IPAQ-S was significantly associated with the presence of hypertension (p=0.03) and gout (p=0.02). Concerning RA parameters, categorical IPAQ-S was significantly associated with HAQ (p=0.03).

Our study showed that PA in RA patients can provide significant improvement in terms of quality of life and function. In RA, regular PA should be part of disease management.