Does Depression Limit Effectiveness of Arthritis Treatments?

An interesting study in Medline showing a link between clinical depression and lack of improvement in patients with psoriatic arthritis.

“Our study demonstrated that the presence of symptoms or a diagnosis of depression/anxiety significantly reduced the probability of achieving sustained minimal disease activity in psoriatic arthritis patients, and this was independent of disease severity as measured by number of damaged joints or medications used,” the researchers wrote.

Potential reasons for the consistent association of depression/anxiety and inability to attain low disease activity including a heightened sensitivity to pain, which may “lead to avoidance, inactivity, deconditioning, and social isolation,” Chandran and co-authors continued, adding that the association with fibromyalgia “may be due to persistent pain that contributes to both the tender joint count and the patient-reported pain and disease activity scores.”

Depression is such a difficult disease to live with for so many reasons, and now you can add “it makes it tougher to treat another chronic, debilitating disease” to the list.

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