Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Feb 23, 2021
Date Accepted: Jul 22, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 25, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
eHealth Smartphone Application for Psoriasis Patients Improves Mental Health, If Not Used Too Frequently: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Intervention Study.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Psoriasis has a negative impact on patients’ mental and physical health. Disease management strategies including educational programs and eHealth devices can improve health care in chronic diseases.
Objective:
Combining an educational program with a disease management smartphone application has been shown to reduce depressive symptoms in psoriasis patients over 24 weeks. Here, we present results of the 60-week long-term study period.
Methods:
Psoriasis patients of the intervention group received an educational program, visits on week 0, 12, 24, 36, and 60, and access to the study-app. The control group attended the visits, only. Additionally, effects of the app usage frequency were assessed. Primary endpoints were a significant reduction of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Score (HADS-A/-D).
Results:
107 patients were included in the study and randomized into the control (n = 53) or intervention group (n = 54). 77 patients completed the study. A significant reduction in HADS D in the intervention group was found in week 12 (P = .04) and 24 (P = .005), but not in week 36 (P = .12) and 60 (P = .32). Patient stratification according to their app usage frequency showed a significant improvement of the HADS-D at week 36 (P = .004) and 60 (P = .04) and in the HADS-A at week 36 (P = .04) and 60 (P = .05) in the group using the app less than once a month.
Conclusions:
These findings support the usage of a disease management smartphone application as a valid tool to achieve a long-term improvement of psoriasis patients’ mental health, if not used too frequently. Clinical Trial: Drks.de DRKS00020755 (https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00020755)
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