Arthritis pain can mar the last few years of life, according to a new study. Moderate to severe pain was common in one-quarter of the people studied, with arthritis as the biggest predictor of pain, even outweighing pain from cancer.
The study suggests that this nonfatal condition should be taken more seriously because of its power to erode quality-of-life, said the authors of the research. They analyzed data from interviews of 4,703 men and women age 50 and older who died while enrolled in the Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing longitudinal study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. While 25% of the participants had significant pain in the last two years of life, that proportion rose to 50% in the last four months of life. The prevalence of pain in the last month of life was 60% among patients with arthritis compared with 26% among patients without arthritis.
