Motivational text messages and counselling can boost health of people with rheumatoid arthritis, study suggests
A new study has shown that a combination of text messages and individual counselling sessions can motivate people with rheumatoid arthritis to be more active and resulted in improved patient-reported clinical outcomes. This type of behavioural intervention was effective in reducing daily sitting time by an average of more than two hours in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and also reduced their cholesterol.
The study, which was presented at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2016) said that people with rheumatoid arthritis tend to be more sedentary than the general population and that his can have serious implications on their health, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Although exercise is known to have a positive effect on pain and physical functioning in people with rheumatoid arthritis, pain often acts as a barrier against maintenance of a physically active lifestyle. A more feasible approach for improving health and well-being in people with the condition would therefore be to focus on reducing sedentary behaviour and increasing light intensity activity, rather than solely concentrating on increasing moderate and vigorous physical activity.
“We know that behavioural approaches are effective in reducing sedentary behaviour in healthy populations,”says Miss Tanja Thomsen of the Copenhagen Centre for Arthritis Research, Centre for Rheumatology and Spine Diseases, Rigshospitalet, Denmark. Our findings support the introduction of behavioural approaches as an effective way to improve the health of rheumatoid arthritis patients, which may also be applicable in other populations with chronic disease and limited mobility,” she adds.
75 adults with rheumatoid arthritis with a self-reported daily sitting time greater than five hours and Health Assessment Questionnaire* score less than 2.5 underwent a 16-week individually tailored, behavioural intervention that included three individual motivational counselling sessions with a health professional and regular text messages aimed at improving motivation to reduce daily sitting time and replacing it with light intensity physical activity. A control group of 75 healthy adult patients matched for other characteristics was encouraged to maintain their usual lifestyle. Daily sitting time was recorded using a wearable activity monitor.
After 16 weeks, there was a significant between-group difference in average daily sitting time in favour of the intervention group of 2.20 hours per day. Secondary outcomes that were also in favour of the intervention group included self-assessment scores of pain, fatigue, physical function and blood measurements of total cholesterol.
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