• Seo Hwa Kim, Haneul Kim, Seungju Kim, SeungIn Paek, Jung Hee Koh, Jennifer Lee, Yong-Won Cho, and Sung-Hwan Park.
• Division of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2018 Aug 27; 33 (35): e216.

BackgroundThis study aimed to address sleep quality in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to determine how it affects health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and cognitive function.MethodsOne hundred and twenty-three patients with RA and 76 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Sleep quality was assessed using the Korean version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Cognitive function and HRQoL was evaluated by a Korean-Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-K) and 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), respectively. Other clinical, demographic, and laboratory data were obtained from retrospective medical chart review.ResultsMore patients in the RA group reported poor sleep quality (PSQI > 5) than in the control group (61% [75/123] vs. 39.5% [30/76]; P = 0.003). Total PSQI was also significantly higher in the RA group (median [interquartile range], 7 [5-11] vs. 5 [3-6.75]; P = 0.001). Total PSQI score negatively correlated with MoCA-K score (Spearman's rho (r) = -0.223; P = 0.003) with a physical component summary (PCS) of SF-36 (r = -0.221; P = 0.003) and a mental component summary (MCS) of SF-36 (r = -0.341; P < 0.001), which means that poor sleep quality was associated with poor cognitive function and low HRQoL.ConclusionThe findings of this study suggest that poor sleep quality is an independent risk factor for low HRQoL and cognitive dysfunction. Efforts to improve the sleep quality of RA patients seem to be an important aspect of integrative treatment for RA.

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