Relationships Between Disease Severity, Social Support and Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Benjamin Ilse, Tino Prell (), Mario Walther, Viktor Hartung, Susanne Penzlin, Florian Tietz, Otto-Wilhelm Witte, Bernhard Strauss and Julian Grosskreutz

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2015, vol. 120, issue 3, 882 pages

Abstract: Quality of life (QOL) is an important issue in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). QOL measurements can help the support care team understand how to maintain or improve QOL in ALS patients. The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between health-related QOL, disease severity and social support in ALS patients. In the current study, 49 German ALS patients were evaluated using the European quality of life score (EQ-5D), ALS Functional Rating Scale in its revised form (ALSFRS-R), Social Support Questionnaire (F-SozU K-14) and the Beck depression inventory. Data concerning patient history and socioeconomic background were collected using a semi-structured interview. Age, gender, number of children, habitation, socioeconomic status and disease duration were not significantly related to health-related QOL (EQ-5D). Positive correlations were found between the ALSFRS-R, social support and health-related QOL, whereas depression was negatively correlated with the ALSFRS-R score. A multiple linear regression model indicated a significant influence of the ALSFRS-R score on health-related QOL in ALS patients, with an additional trend for social support as a predictor. These results suggest that because of the logarithmic association between measures, compensatory therapy for loss of health-related QOL should be optimised during the course of the disease in ALS patients. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Quality of life; Health-related quality of life; Social support; ALSFRS-R; Motor neuron disease (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-014-0621-y (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:120:y:2015:i:3:p:871-882

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-014-0621-y

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().