POS1473-HPR THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVEL AND EXERCISE SELF-EFFICACY, BODY AWARENESS, AND FATIGUE SEVERITY IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS: A CROSS-SECTIONAL AND PILOT STUDY

Abstract

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic infammatory disease in which, for many reasons of the nature of the disease, patients tend to perform less physical activity (PA) than recommended in the guidelines (1). Many variables associated with a level of PA in patients have been described (2). However, there are limited studies about related factors with PA in RA patients. Objectives: To investigate the relationship between PA level and exercise self-ef-fcacy, body awareness, and fatigue severity in RA patients. Methods: A total of 80 RA patients (women/men=61/19, age=56.83±11.56 years) who were diagnosed according to the ACR 2010 criteria and followed in university outpatient clinic were included in our study. All patients were assessed regarding physical characteristics (age, body-mass index), exercise status (yes/no), and occupational status (working/not working/retired). Physical activity level by International Physical Activity Questionnaire, exercise self-efficacy by Exercise Self-Efficacy Scale, body awareness by Body Awareness Questionnaire, and fatigue by Bristol Rheumatoid Arthritis Multidimensional Scale was assessed. Results: Patients' characteristics are presented in Table 1. It was observed that patients have low PA levels. Signifcant correlation was found between PA and exercise self-efficacy (r=0.410, p<0.001), body awareness (r=0.374, p=0.001), and fatigue (r=-0.482, p<0.001). Conclusion: Our study showed that RA patients had low PA and PA was related to exercise self-efficacy and fatigue moderately and body awareness weakly. We think that it may be important to assess these variables and to plan interventions to improve these variables while planning PA programs of the patients.