Inflammatory biomarkers and psychological variables to assess quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a cross-sectional study

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic gastrointestinal condition. While inflammatory biomarkers are valuable for diagnosing and monitoring the disease, their correlation with patients' quality of life (QoL) is not well-established. This study aims to investigate the correlations between inflammatory biomarkers and the quality of life (QoL) variables of individuals diagnosed with IBD in clinical remission. The sample of this cross-sectional study included 74 patients (80% women; 45 ± 11 years old) diagnosed with IBD. Outcome variables included faecal calprotectin (FC), C-reactive protein (CRP), cortisol levels from hair samples, and anxiety and depression assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-A and HADS-D, respectively), alongside QoL evaluated with the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire 32 (IBDQ-32). Bivariate correlations were calculated using the Pearson correlation coefficient, and stepwise linear regression analyses were conducted to identify independent factors contributing to IBDQ-32 scores. The IBDQ-32 did not significantly correlate with any biomarkers. However, it exhibited a large and statistically significant negative correlation with HADS-A (r = -0.651) and HADS-D (r = -0.611) scores (