Comparison of Health Promoting Lifestyle of Female Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients with Healthy Women and Relationship with Demographic

The main purpose of this research were to study health- promotion lifestyle (HPL) of female rheumatoid arthritis patients in comparison with healthy women and to determine the relationship between demographic factors (including age, disease duration, income, and education) and lifestyles of these patients. With available sampling in 2011(1389s.c) in the city of Tabriz, 105 female rheumatoid arthritis patients and 105 healthy women participated in the research. Research instruments included a researcher made demographic questionnaire and Health Promoting Lifestyles Profile: || (Walker, Sechrist&Pender,1987). The data were analyzed by applying t- test for independent groups and multiple analyses of Variance. The data indicated that the healthy women had higher overall scores on the total HPL and six subscales than rheumatoid arthritis patients. Furthermore, based on t- test result, significant differences were observed between the overall rheumatoid arthritis patients HPL scores and healthy females except in stress management dimension(p<0.01). According to the results of regression analysis, 0.28 percent of the variance in the patients PHL can be explained by the demographic factor of education. These findings, it may be suggested that professionals encourage rheumatoid arthritis patients to practice in health- promo/ting behaviors with appropriate interventional and education methods.