Quality of Life in a Swedish Cohort of Patients with Mycosis Fungoides.

Abstract

Mycosis fungoides (MF) is a disease that evolves slowly over years with few options for curative treatment. Improving health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is therefore an important treatment goal. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of HRQoL, using a dermatology-adapted HRQoL questionnaire, Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), in patients with MF. Baseline data from a cohort study (BIO-MUSE) of patients with MF wasere used to investigate which aspect of DLQI is the most affected and how DLQI relates to different clinical and physiological parameters. Data from a period of 12 months were used to study how DLQI changes over time. The symptom domain, for example itching, was the aspect of the DLQI that had the greatest impact on HRQoL. Thymus and activation-regulated chemokine (TARC)/ chemokine (C-C) ligand 17 (CCL17) were analysed in blood and were shown to have a positive correlation with DLQI (r=0.482, p=0.043). It was further shown that increased itching at baseline was a strong predictor of a worse DLQI score in the domain of symptoms (r=0.677, p=0.002). Future research in a larger cohort is needed to investigate the effect of itch in HRQoLhealth-related quality of life in patients with MF.