Fatigue and health-related quality of life in patients with immune thrombocytopenia: a longitudinal assessment in China

ABSTRACT

Background

There is lacking studies of longitudinally assessment of fatigue and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among Chinese immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) adults. We aimed to evaluate changes in fatigue and HRQoL and identify the associated factors.

Methods

Patients’ characteristics, Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT-F) and the ITP-specific Patient Assessment Questionnaire (ITP-PAQ) scores at admission (T0), at discharge (T1), and three months after discharge (T2) were collected. Linear mixed effects models were used to examine changes over time.

Results

We included 175 patients. The mean score of FACIT-F at T0 was 37.2 and increased at T1 (39.0), while then decreased at T2 (34.7). Patients who were single, retired, had persistent ITP, splenomegaly had more severe fatigue, whereas those who had not received any prior treatment and had a bleeding score of 0 at admission had milder fatigue. The mean score of ITP-PAQ was 57.7 at T0, then gradually increased to 60.3 at T1 and 62.8 at T2. Patients with persistent ITP and those who have never received treatment for ITP have better HRQoL.

Conclusion

ITP adults’ fatigue and HRQoL were impaired. Patients’ fatigue improved at discharge but worsened at three months after discharge, while HRQoL gradually improved over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Immune thrombocytopenia
• HRQoL
• FACIT-F
• ITP-PAQ
• longitudinal

Declaration of interest

R Yang has received speaker/consultancy fees from Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, and Takeda. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial relationships or otherwise to disclose.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the participants for their time and effort. We also sincerely appreciate Yidu Cloud (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., China, for providing technical support in data extracting. Yidu Cloud (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. had no impact on the study design and study results.

Authors’ contributions

R Yang and X Liu conceived and designed the research study. W Zhang wrote the first draft of the manuscript and analyzed/interpreted the data. S Xie contributed to the manuscript preparation and data interpretation. R Fu, Y Chen, W Liu, T Sun, M Ju, H Li, F Xue, and L Zhang contributed to the acquisition and interpretation of data for the work. All authors critically reviewed and revised the manuscript. The final version of this manuscript was approved by all authors.

Ethical approval

The ethical approval for this study was granted by the Ethics Committee at the Institute of Hematology and Blood Disease Hospital (IHBDH), Tianjin, China (Reference No. QTJC2022040-EC-1).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82070125 and 82170127), and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (2021-I2M-1-003, 2021-I2M-1-073).