Concerns about disease management and psychological stress in SAPHO patients during the COVID-19 epidemic

  1. Shuo Zhang
  2. Xinyu Lu
  3. Yihan Cao
  4. Yueting Li
  5. Chen Li
  6. Wen Zhang

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Abstract

Objectives The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic brings potentially impact on the care of patients with rheumatic diseases, including SAPHO syndrome. We aimed to investigate the disease status, concerns about management, and psychological stress in SAPHO patients during the COVID-19 epidemic. Method A structured questionnaire was distributed online to patients with SAPHO syndrome enrolled in a Chinese cohort study on March 3rd, 2020. Patients were ask about the current treatments, disease status, and concerns about disease management during the epidemic. Psychologic stress (scored from 0 to 10 points) and psychological problems were reported by the patients. Results A total of 157 patients (mean age 38.4 ± 12.3 years, 66.9% females) were included in the study. None of the patients were diagnosed with COVID-19. Sixty-five (41.4%) patients worried about their disease conditions during the epidemic with concerns including medication shortage (73.8%), delay of consultation (46.2%), and disease aggravation (61.5%). Sixty-seven (42.7%) patients had medication withdrawal or dose reduction due to lack of drugs, irregular daily schedule or subjective reasons. The most common psychological problems reported was little interest or pleasure in doing things (66.2%). Patients with progressive disease condition were more distressed and disturbed by the epidemic. Patients with nail involvement felt more worried about their disease conditions than patients without (59.6% vs 31.0%, p =0. 001). Conclusions The COVID-19 epidemic imposes a negative impact on the disease management and psychological stress in SAPHO patients. Patients' access to specialty care and medication well as mental stress is of great concern.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.07.20084087: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: 9 Participation in the study was voluntarily, and written informed consent was obtained from each patient.
    IRB: This study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the ethics committee of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (S-K1171).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis: Data analysis was conducted using SPSS software, version 24 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, Illinois, USA).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Due to research design, our survey has several limitations. Firstly, only the subjective score was used to quantify the psychological stress. Secondly, their current disease situations were reported subjectively by patients due to the fact that patients cannot be revisited in time with restricted movement. Nonetheless, in the analysis, relatively objective problems were adopted as much as possible to ensure the accuracy and validity of the data in psychological and disease assessment, such as the frequency of a certain psychological problem, whether be worried about the disease condition for the epidemic, and organ involvement.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.07.20084087v1 on medRxiv