The prevalence of depression in adult rheumatoid arthritis patients in China: a Meta-analysis / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the rate of depression in adult rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in China.Methods Literature search was conducted to collect studies on the prevalence of depression in adult RA patients in Cochrane library, Medline, EMbase, China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI),China Biology Medicine (CBM), Chinese science & technology journal database (VIP) and Wanfang database.Data were analyzed by R 3.2.0 software after evaluating all data.Results A total of 25 studies, including a total size of 4 830 and 2 712 patients of depression, were eligible for inclusion in the review.The prevalence of depression by analyzing the effect size was 44.7％ [95％CI (37.5％, 52.0％)], which was close to the median of 43.0％ from all studies included and higher than the global rate 38.8％ [95％CI (34％, 43％)].Eight studies, including the sample size of 1 028 cases, 311 cases of mild depressive disorders and 219 cases of moderate or severe depressive disorders, reported the prevalence levels of 30.2％ [30.2％CI (22.1％, 40.0％)] and 16.5％ [95％CI (9.6％,26.9％)], respectively.Subgroup analysis showed that the depression rate of female RA patients was higher than male, the depression rate in the central and western areas were higher than that of the eastern region, the prevalence level estimated by the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was higher than estimated by other tools.Sensitivity analysis showed that the pooled effect size had good stability and reliability.Conclusion The prevalence rate of depression in adult RA patients is 44.7％, suggesting that medical staff should pay much attention to depression in adult RA patients.