Chronic fatigue is associated with increased disease-related worries and concerns in inflammatory bowel disease

AIM： To investigate the impact of chronic fatigue on disease-related worries in inflammatory bowel disease （IBD） and the potential multicolinearity between sub- jective questionnaires. METHODS： Patients in remission or with mild-to- moderate disease activity completed the fatigue ques- tionnaire （FQ）, the rating form of IBD patient concerns （RFIPC）, the Short-Form 36 （SF-36）, and IBD question-naire （N-IBDQ）. In addition, clinical and epidemiologi- cal data were obtained. RESULTS： In total, 140 patients were included; of which 92 were diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and 48 with Crohn＇s disease. The mean age of patients with chronic fatigue was 44.2 years （SD = 15.8） and for non-fatigued patients was 44.7 years （SD = 16.0）. Chronic fatigued patients had clinically significantly increased levels of disease-related worries, as mea- sured by Cohen＇s d effect size. Worries about having an ostomy bag, loss of bowel control, and energy lev- els were most prominent in both chronic fatigued and non-chronic fatigued IBD patients. Variance inflation factor （VIF） and tolerance indicated that there were no problematic multicolinearity among the FQ, RFIPC, SF-36 and N-IBDQ responses （VIF 〈 5 and tolerance 〉 2）. CONCLUSION： Chronic fatigue is associated with in- creased levels of disease-related worries and concerns in IBD. Increased levels of worries were also associ- ated with impaired health-related quality of life.