OBJECTIVES : To summarize the results of patient-reported outcome (PRO) and related instruments adopted in recent publications among Chinese adult rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients.

METHODS : Articles published between 2016 to 2018 were systematically searched. Studies reported PRO results for Chinese adult RA patients separately were included. PRO measures were classified into health domains according to prior publications and European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) outcome library. Meta-analysis was applied to pool the PROs using Stata 15.0 (StataCorp).

RESULTS : A total of 167 articles with 28,775 subjects of interests were included. In total, 103 PRO instruments were reported. The most commonly assessed health domains were pain (41.9%), physical function (40.1%) and morning stiffness (32.3%), while pain visual analogue scale (VAS) (36.5%), morning stiffness duration (MSD) (32.3%) and health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) (28.1%) were the most popular instruments. The mean (95%CI) pain VAS scores (0-10) at baseline, week 4, 8 and 12 were 5.7 (5.1-6.3), 3.6 (2.5-4.7), 3.7 (3.1-4.4) and 3.2 (2.2-4.2). The mean MSD (mins) was 93.6 (95%CI: 80.8-106.5) at baseline, and reduced to 42.0 and 42.3 at week 12 and 24, respectively. For HAQ (0-3), the mean (95% CI) values were 1.5 (1.0-2.1), 0.9 (0.6-1.3) and 0.4 (0.2-0.5) at baseline, week 12 and 24. Additionally, the mean (95%CI) patient global assessment VAS (0-10) scores were 6.0 (5.5-6.6) and 2.9 (2.3-3.6) at baseline and week 12. Fatigue VAS (0-10) was averagely 4.9 (95%CI: 3.9-5.9) at baseline. I² statistics for combined estimates above were > 90%.

CONCLUSIONS : The health domains and PRO instruments were reported consistently to the recommendation. However, there were high heterogeneity among the PROs. Chinese RA patients were not satisfied on their health status at baseline, although improvements were shown after treatments. Further studies are needed to understand disease burden and explore effective ways to improve PROs among Chinese RA patients.