Juniper E F, Wisniewski M E, Cox F M, Emmett A H, Nielsen K E, O'Byrne P M
Dept of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Eur Respir J. 2004 Feb;23(2):287-91. doi: 10.1183/09031936.04.00064204.
Many studies have shown that correlation between clinical asthma status and asthma-specific quality of life is only weak to moderate. However, this relationship has never been explored to determine whether the weakness is due to noise of measurement or whether quality of life is a distinct component of asthma health status. With a database from three clinical trials (n = 763), factor analysis was used to explore the relationships between quality of life, measured by the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ), and conventional measures of asthma clinical status (symptoms, airway calibre and rescue beta2-agonist use). The analysis revealed that although patients with severe, poorly controlled asthma tend to have worse quality of life than milder, well-controlled patients, overall asthma health status has four components (factors): asthma-specific quality of life; airway calibre; daytime symptoms and daytime beta2-agonist use, and night-time symptoms and night-time beta2-agonist use. The clean loading of all 21 outcomes onto four distinct and clinically identifiable factors suggests that, although some weakness of correlation between clinical indices and quality of life may be due to noise of measurement, it is mainly attributable to asthma health status being composed of distinct components.
许多研究表明，临床哮喘状态与哮喘特异性生活质量之间的相关性仅为弱到中度。然而，从未对这种关系进行探究，以确定这种微弱相关性是由于测量误差，还是生活质量是哮喘健康状况的一个独特组成部分。利用来自三项临床试验（n = 763）的数据库，采用因子分析来探究由哮喘生活质量问卷（AQLQ）测量的生活质量与哮喘临床状态的传统指标（症状、气道口径和急救β2受体激动剂使用情况）之间的关系。分析显示，尽管重度、控制不佳的哮喘患者往往比轻度、控制良好的患者生活质量更差，但总体哮喘健康状况有四个组成部分（因子）：哮喘特异性生活质量；气道口径；日间症状和日间β2受体激动剂使用情况，以及夜间症状和夜间β2受体激动剂使用情况。所有21项结果在四个不同且临床上可识别的因子上的清晰载荷表明，尽管临床指标与生活质量之间的一些微弱相关性可能是由于测量误差，但主要归因于哮喘健康状况由不同的组成部分构成。
