Relationship between disease activity, organ damage and health-related quality of life in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: A systemic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a common systemic autoimmune disease that may lead to considerable physical, psychological, and socioeconomical burden. In previous studies, inconsistent results were reported for the association of disease activity and organ damage with health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This paper aimed to explore the relationship between disease activity, organ damage, and HRQoL measured by SF-36, EQ-5D, LupusQoL, and LupusPRO and investigate whether the correlation is region-specific.

METHODS: We systematically searched for studies reporting the association between SLE disease activity, organ damage, and HRQoL in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, World of Science, the Cochrane Library, and CINAHL from inception to December 2019. A meta-analysis and region subgroup analysis were performed with a random-effects model to estimate pooled correlation coefficients and heterogeneity.

RESULTS: Forty articles were included representing of 6079 adult SLE patients. The meta-analysis of SF-36 and LupusPRO studies revealed mild to moderate negative correlations between disease activity and domains of these HRQoL measurements (correlation coefficient r ranging from -0.27 to -0.07). Likewise, negative correlations were found between organ damage and domains of SF-36 and LupusPRO (r ranging from -0.25 to -0.08). The pooled correlation coefficient is relatively higher in physical functioning related domains than mental health. In the region subgroup analysis, disease activity had strong negative correlations with SF-36 domains in African and European SLE patients, while organ damage had the strongest negative correlation with SF-36 domains in Asian SLE patients (p < 0.010).

CONCLUSION: This study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the relationship between disease activity, organ damage, and four popular HRQoL instruments, which provides useful insight into the target therapy in SLE management.