TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wiegmann, Sabine
A1  - Armbrecht, Gabriele
A1  - Borucki, Diana
A1  - Bühring, Björn
A1  - Buttgereit, Frank
A1  - Detzer, Christian
A1  - Schaumburg, Desirée
A1  - Zeiner, Kim Nikola
A1  - Dietzel, Roswitha
T1  - Balance and prospective falls in patients with rheumatoid arthritis
T2  - BMC musculoskeletal disorders
N2  - Background_ Postural control is associated with fall risk. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a higher risk to fall than healthy subjects. The objective of this study was to identify associations between variables of postural control with prospective falls in patients with RA.
Methods: For the baseline, the balance performance of 289 men and women with RA, ages 24–85 years, was evaluated by SPPB, FICSIT-4 and Romberg tests. Postural sway for Romberg, semitandem, tandem and one-leg stands were measured with the Leonardo Mechanograph®. Self-reported disability was assessed using the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) and the Activity-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC-scale). Falls were reported in quarterly reports over a year. Univariate and multiple logistic regression analysis were used to explore any associations with falling. Receiver-operating characteristics were determined, and the area under the curve is reported.
Results`A total of 238 subjects completed the 1-year follow-up, 48 (20.2%) experienced at least one fall during the observational period. Age (OR = 1.04, CI 1.01–1.07), HAQ (OR = 1.62, 1.1–2.38), FICSIT-4 scoring 0–4 (OR = 2.38, 1.13–5.0), and one-leg standing (OR = 2.14, 1.06–4.31) showed significant associations with falls. With regard to the SPPB and ABC-scale, no statistically significant associations with falls were found. The quartiles containing the worst results of medio-lateral sway of Romberg (OR = 2.63, CI 1.03–6.69), total sway of semitandem (OR = 3.07, CI 1.10–8.57) and tandem (OR = 2.86, CI 1.06–7.69), and area of sway of semitandem (OR = 2.80, CI 1.11–7.08) stands were associated with falls.
Conclusions: The assessment of a one-leg stand seems to be a good screening tool to discriminate between high and low risk of falls in RA patients in clinical practice. A low FICSIT-4 score and several sway parameters are important predictors of falls.
KW  - Rheumatoid arthritis
KW  - Fall
KW  - Balance
KW  - Postural sway
KW  - Postural control
KW  - One-leg stand
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/69446
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-694469
SN  - 1471-2474
N1  - Availability of data and materials
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
N1  - Funding
This project received financial support by the Deutsche Rheuma-Liga Bundesverband e.V. and from the Stiftung Wolfgang Schulze. The publication was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
N1  - The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
VL  - 23
IS  - art. 549
SP  - 1
EP  - 21
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -