Using Patient-Reported Outcome Measures to Capture the Patient's Voice in Research and Care of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Medication burden in young adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: data from a multicentre observational study

OBJECTIVE

To assess the medication and disease burden of young adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

METHODS

Young adults with JIA prospectively followed in the Juvenile Arthritis Methotrexate/Biologics long-term Observation reported on their health status and medication use. All medications taken (disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs)/prescription/over-the-counter drugs, but excluding most local therapies) classified according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System were included in this analysis. Medication use at last follow-up was evaluated by sex, JIA category and time from symptom onset to the first biological DMARD (bDMARD) start.

RESULTS

A total of 1306 young adults (68% female) with JIA and a mean disease duration of 13.6±6 years were included in the study. Patients reported using on average 2.4±2.1 medicines and 1.5±1.7 non-DMARD medicines, respectively, at the last follow-up. Almost a quarter of the patients reported polypharmacy. The higher the number of medications used was, the higher the disease activity, pain and fatigue, and the lower the quality of life of patients. Medication usage differed significantly between sexes and JIA categories, being highest in patients with rheumatoid factor-positive polyarthritis and systemic JIA. The number of medications used was significantly associated with the time from symptom onset to bDMARD start. Patients taking opioids or antidepressants had a particularly high disease burden and had received bDMARDs an average of 2 years later than patients not taking these medications.

CONCLUSION

Medication use in adults with JIA varies depending on sex, JIA category, and the time between symptom onset and initiation of treatment with bDMARD.

Association Between Patient‐Reported Outcomes and Treatment Failure in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Objective

Children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) frequently exhibit symptoms months before diagnosis. The aims of this study were to assess whether baseline patient‐reported outcomes (PROs) are associated with changes in JIA pharmacotherapy treatment and whether symptom duration prior to JIA diagnosis is associated with disease activity scores over time.

Methods

This is a retrospective cohort study of patients with an incident diagnosis of JIA. Patient‐reported symptom duration, pain, energy, disease activity, sleep, anxiety, and depression screenings, as well as provider‐reported disease activity and joint count, were collected during routine clinical care. Cox proportional hazards evaluated PROs, disease activity scores, and symptom duration with initial medication failure within 9 months of diagnosis. Multivariate mixed effects linear regression evaluated the association of symptom duration with disease activity scores.

Results

There were 58 children (66% female, 35% oligoarticular JIA) in the cohort. Nearly half of patients failed initial therapy within 9 months. Unadjusted analysis showed that higher energy (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.82; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.69‐0.99; P = 0.04) and longer symptom duration (HR: 0.96; 95% CI: 0.93‐0.99; P = 0.03) at diagnosis were protective against medication failure. Adjusted analysis showed that symptom duration prior to diagnosis was protective against medication failure (HR: 0.95; 95% CI: 0.92‐0.99; P = 0.02); there was no association between medication failure and pain, psychiatric symptoms, or disease activity scores. There was a positive association with longer symptom duration and higher disease activity at 30 and 60 days, but this was not sustained.

Conclusion

Higher energy levels and longer symptom duration are protective against initial JIA treatment failures. Initial treatments informed by patient‐reported data could lead to more successful outcomes by changes in treatment paradigms.

Assessing Patient-Reported Outcomes in Pediatric Rheumatic Diseases: Considerations and Future Directions

For children with pediatric rheumatic diseases (PRDs), the inclusion of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) is critical to inform decision making in health care delivery and research settings. PROs are direct reports from a child on their health status, without interpretation by anyone else. PROs improve understanding of the patient experience, allow clinicians to provide patient-centered care, and add value to clinical trials. When PROs cannot be collected directly from the patient, caregiver-proxy reports can provide important information on the child's more observable symptoms and functioning. In this article, we describe the current use of PROs in specific PRDs, align current research with best practice recommendations for both clinical care and research settings, highlight exciting new developments, and identify areas for future research.

Emerging Tools to Capture Self-Reported Acute and Chronic Pain Outcome in Children and Adolescents: A Literature Review

The advancement of digital health provides strategic and cost-effective opportunities for the progression of health care in children and adolescents. It is important for clinicians to be aware of the potential of emerging pain outcome measures and employ evidence-based tools capable of reliably tracking acute and chronic pain over time. The main emerging pain outcome measures for children and adolescents were examined. Overall, seven main texts and their corresponding digital health technologies were included in this study. The main findings indicated that the use of emerging digital health is able to reduce recall bias and can improve the real time paediatric data capture of acute and chronic symptoms. This literature review highlights new developments in pain management in children and adolescents and emphasizes the need for further research to be conducted on the use of emerging technologies in pain management. This may include larger scale, multicentre studies to further assess validity and reliability of these tools across various demographics. The privacy and security of mHealth data must also be carefully evaluated when choosing health applications that can be introduced into daily clinical settings.

Non-disease specific patient-reported outcome measures of health-related quality of life in juvenile idiopathic arthritis: a systematic review of current research and practice

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), as a chronic condition, is associated with symptoms negatively impacting health-related quality of life (HRQL). Regarding growing interest in the implementation of the patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), we aimed to review the non-disease specific PROMs addressing HRQL assessment, potentially useful in the clinical care of JIA and daily practice. A systematic literature search was conducted using MEDLINE/PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus and Embase databases (1990 to 2021), with a focus on the recent 5-years period. Entry keywords included the terms: “children”, “adolescents”, “JIA”, “chronic diseases”, “HRQL”, “PROMs” and wordings for the specific tools. Several available PROMs intended to measure HRQL, non-specific to JIA, were identified. The presented outcomes differed in psychometric properties, yet all were feasible in assessing HRQL in healthy children and those with chronic diseases. Both EQ-5D-Y and PedsQL have already been tested in JIA, showing relevant reliability, validity, and similar efficiency as disease-specific measurements. For PROMIS® PGH-7 and PGH-7 + 2, such validation and cross-cultural adaptation need to be performed. Considering the future directions in pediatric rheumatology, the large-scale implementation of PROMIS® PGH-7 and PGH-7 + 2 in JIA offers a particularly valuable opportunity. The PROMs reflect the patient perception of the chronic disease and allow to understand child’s opinions. The PROMs may provide an important element of the holistic medical care of patients with JIA and a standardized tool for clinical outcomes, monitoring disease severity and response to treatment.

Parent-Reported Medication Side-Effects and Their Impact on Health-Related Quality of Life in Children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

OBJECTIVE

To describe frequency and severity of parent-reported medication side effects (SE) in children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA), relative to physician-reported actionable adverse events (AAE); and to assess their impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL).

METHODS

Newly diagnosed JIA patients recruited between 2017 and 2019 to the Canadian Alliance of Pediatric Rheumatology Investigators (CAPRI) Registry were included. Parents reported presence and severity (0=no problem, 10=very severe) of medication SE at every clinic visit. Physicians were asked to report any AAE. HRQoL was assessed using the Quality of My Life (QoML) questionnaire (0=the worst, 10=the best) and parent's global assessment (0=very well, 10=very poor). Analyses included proportion of visits with SE or AAE, cumulative incidence by Kaplan-Meier methods, and HRQoL impact measured with longitudinal mixed effects models.

RESULTS

SE were reported at 371/884 (42%) visits (95% CI 39-45%) in 249 patients with a median of 2 SE per visit (IQR 1,3), and median severity of 3 (IQR 1.5,5). Most SE were gastrointestinal (32.5% of visits) or behavioral/psychiatric (22.4%). SE frequency was lowest with NSAID alone (34.7%) and highest with prednisone and methotrexate combinations (66%). SE cumulative incidence was 67% (95% CI 59-75) within 1y of diagnosis, and 36% (95% CI 28-44) for AAE. Parent global and QoML scores were worse with SE present, the impact persisted after adjusting for pain and number of active joints.

CONCLUSION

Parents report 2/3 children with JIA experience SE impacting their HRQoL within 1y of diagnosis. SE mitigation strategies are needed in managing JIA.

Comparison of a Mobile Health Electronic Visual Analog Scale App With a Traditional Paper Visual Analog Scale for Pain Evaluation: Cross-Sectional Observational Study

Background

Accurate quantification of pain in a clinical setting is vital. The use of an electronic pain scale enables data to be collected, analyzed, and utilized much faster compared with traditional paper-based scales. The advancement of smart technology in pediatric and adult pain evaluation may offer opportunities to introduce easy-to-use and reliable pain assessment methods within different clinical settings. If promptly introduced within different pediatric and adult pain clinic services, validated and easily accessible mobile health pain apps may lead to early pain detection, promoting improvement in patient’s quality of life and leading to potentially less time off from school or work.

Objective

This cross-sectional observational study aimed to investigate the interchangeability of an electronic visual analog scale (eVAS) app with a traditional paper visual analog scale (pVAS) among Australian children, adolescents, and adults for pain evaluation.

Methods

Healthy participants (age range 10-75 years) were recruited from a sporting club and a secondary school in Melbourne (Australia). The data collection process involved application of pressure (8.5 kg/cm²) from a Wagner Force Dial FDK 20 to the midpoint of the thumb. The pressure was applied twice with a 5-minute interval. At each pressure application, participants were asked to randomly record their pain perception using the “eVAS” accessible via the “Interactive Clinics” app and the traditional pVAS. Statistical analysis was conducted to determine intermethod and intramethod reliabilities.

Results

Overall, 109 healthy participants were recruited. Adults (mean age 42.43 years, SD 14.50 years) had excellent reliability, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.94 (95% CI 0.91-0.96). Children and adolescents (mean age 13.91 years, SD 2.89 years) had moderate-to-good intermethod and intramethod reliabilities, with an ICC of 0.80 (95% CI 0.70-0.87) and average ICC of 0.80 (95% CI 0.69-0.87), respectively.

Conclusions

The eVAS app appears to be interchangeable compared with the traditional pVAS among children, adolescents, and adults. This pain evaluation method may offer new opportunities to introduce user-friendly and validated pain assessment apps for patients, clinicians, and allied health professionals.

Toward Accelerated Authorization and Access to New Medicines for Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

A meeting was organized to bring together multiple stakeholders involved in the testing and authorization of new medications for juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) to discuss current issues surrounding clinical trials and access to new medications for children and adolescents with JIA. The Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance invited representatives of regulatory agencies (Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency), and major pharmaceutical companies with JIA-approved products or products in development, patient and parent representatives, representatives of an advocacy organization (Arthritis Foundation), and pediatric rheumatology clinicians/investigators to a 1-day meeting in April 2018. The participants engaged in discussion regarding issues in clinical trials. As the pharmacologic options to treat inflammatory arthritis rapidly expand, registration trial designs to test medications in JIA patients must adapt. Many methodologies successfully used in the recent past are no longer feasible. The pool of patients meeting entry criteria who are willing to participate is shrinking while the number of medications to be tested is growing. Suggested solutions included proposing innovative clinical trial methods to regulatory agencies, as well as open discussions among stakeholders. Ensuring that new medications are authorized in a timely manner to meet the needs of JIA patients worldwide is critical. Approaches should include open dialog between regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and other stakeholders to develop and implement novel study designs, including patient and clinician perspectives to define meaningful trial outcomes, and changing existing study plans.

Health-related quality of life in children with early-stage juvenile idiopathic arthritis

BACKGROUND

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a chronic inflammatory disease resulting in physical and psychological disability. This study aimed to measure the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and identify factors influencing the HRQOL.

METHODS

We conducted a cross-sectional study in Thai children with JIA and their parents between January and December 2015, using the Thai version of the Pediatrics Quality of Life (PedsQL) 4.0 generic core scale.

RESULTS

Sixty-five children (33 girls and 32 boys) were included. The median age of the children was 9.6 (interquartile range [IQR] 6.4-12.3) years and the median disease duration was 1.1 (IQR 0.2-2.2) years. The physical health subscale had the lowest score, with a median (range) of 78.1 (34.4-100). Twenty-five (45.4%) children were classified as having suboptimal HRQOL. The school functioning subscale had the lowest score, at 60 (25-100) reported by parents. High disease activity and a disease duration <1 year were significantly associated with suboptimal HRQOL reported by parents, with adjusted odds ratios (ORs) of 20.2 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.4, 291.7) and 5.9 (95% CI 1.2, 33.3), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Almost half of Thai children with JIA had suboptimal HRQOL. The physical health score was the lowest subscale reported by the children. Early, effective management of disease activity could improve the HRQOL in children with JIA.

Mental health and adjustment to juvenile idiopathic arthritis: Level of agreement between parent and adolescent reports according to Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and Adolescent Outcomes Questionnaire

The aims of this study were threefold. Firstly, to analyze the psychometric properties of the Polish-language Pediatric Outcomes Data Collection Instrument (PODCI) questionnaire in the self-report Adolescent Outcomes Questionnaire (adolescents, 11-18 years of age) and in the parent-report Adolescent Outcomes Questionnaire (completed by a parent or guardian of an adolescent aged 11-18 years). Secondly, to determine the level of agreement between parents and adolescents in rating dysfunction in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and thirdly, to examine associations between psychological adjustments of patients to JIA and disease as well as their socio-demographic characteristics. The study sample consisted of 52 participants. 26 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 18 years with a diagnosis of JIA and 26 parents were considered for inclusion. Disease course was classified as pauciarticular (n = 12, 46.2%) and polyarticular (n = 14, 53.8%). Participants completed the PODCI (self- and parent- report) twice and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire-25 (SDQ-25). Considering the distribution of results regarding PODCI normative scores, 73.1% of parents and 69.2% of patients scored below 50 on the Global Functioning Scale; that is lower than the average for the general healthy population. Regarding the parent report, the total score of the SDQ-25 equaled 11.86 (SD 2.66), whereas the patient report equaled 11.23 (SD 2.78). The study groups do not differ significantly in regards to either the PODCI or the SDQ-25 results. Parents and adolescents with JIA appear to hold very similar perceptions of patients' health. Greater differences emerge as disease severity and age of patients increase. Excellent internal consistency, intrarater and test-retest reliability of the Global Functioning Scale have been confirmed in the Polish version of the PODCI, the questionnaire may therefore aid identification of patients reporting significant problems in this group.