Impact of Life Events and Psychological Stress in Rheumatoid Arthritis Set-up : Case-control Study Within a Multifactorial and Integrative Psychological Model

Overview

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory rheumatic disease that can lead to structural damage and handicap. The RA physiopathology is multifactorial, including genetic and environmental risk factors. The identification of environmental factors implication is crucial to understand the RA mechanism, and improves the diagnosis and the treatment of the disease.

The physiopathology of RA is multifactorial, implicating genetic and environmental factors. Within the environmental factors, the exact role of psychological stress and life events on the onset of the disease is still under question. In clinical practice, patients usually report the occurrence of a stressing life event before the diagnosis of the disease (mourning, dismissal, divorce…). Nevertheless, literature reviews present some discrepancies and did not lead to a clear identification of the role of psychological stress in RA onset. This is mainly due to the evaluation methods of stress within those previous studies, considering stress as a unique response of the organism without taking into account personal, sociological, biological or environmental history. The aim of the study is to analyze the impact of stress on the RA onset within an integrative model, to evaluate patient assessment of the stress, and to present strategies to fix it.

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