Burden of Inflammatory Bowel Disease on Patient Mood, Fatigue, Work, and Health-Related Quality of Life in Thailand: A Case-Control Study

Abstract Background Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has become an emerging disease in Asia. The burden of disease affects health-related quality of life (HRQoL), economics, and society. We compared HRQoL of IBD patients with/without active disease to that of the general population. Methods Consecutive patients with active disease and patients in clinical remission were prospectively recruited. For each IBD patient, an age- and sex-matched healthy control was invited. Active disease was defined as patient-reported clinical symptoms (ClinPRO) with endoscopic inflammation. All participants completed five questionnaires: (1) Short IBD Questionnaire (SIBDQ); (2) Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS); (3) Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-Fatigue); (4) Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire (WPAI); and (5) EuroQol 5-Dimension 5-Level scale (EQ5D5L). Multiple regression analyses were used to assess differences in HRQoL scores between IBD patients and controls. Results A total of 418 participants (209 IBD, 209 controls) were included. There were 101 patients with active disease and 108 patients in clinical remission. Regarding patients with active disease compared with controls, there was a significant mean difference in scores (95% CI) of 12.3 (9.5–15.2) on the SIBDQ; 6.7 (4.7–8.8), FACIT-fatigue; 1.6 (0.6–2.7), HADS-anxiety; 1.6 (0.8–2.4), HADS-depression; 20.3% (13.0%–27.7%), work productivity impairment; and 0.089 (0.045–0.134), EQ5Q5L (P < .05, all comparisons). Regarding patients in clinical remission compared with controls, none of these mean differences achieved a minimal clinically important difference. Conclusions Active IBD has a negative impact on HRQoL, whereas patients in clinical remission showed no clinically significant difference from the general population on HRQoL. Lay Summary The presence of active IBD significantly decreased patient’s quality of life in all dimensions whereas patients in clinical remission showed no clinically significant difference from the general population on quality of life.