Incidence, risk factors, and correlation with organ involvement of psychological disorders in patients with Sjögren’s syndrome

Figure 1 Comparison of clinical symptom severity between psychological disorder and non-psychological disorder groups in Sjögren’s syndrome patients. A: Dry mouth and dry eye visual analogue scale (VAS) scores; B: Incidence of joint pain and Raynaud’s phenomenon. Patients with psychological disorders (PD) demonstrated significantly more severe clinical symptoms compared to those without PDs, including higher VAS scores for dry mouth (7.2 ± 1.8 vs 5.4 ± 2.1) and dry eye symptoms (6.9 ± 2.0 vs 5.1 ± 2.3), as well as increased incidence of systemic manifestations such as joint pain (78.2% vs 61.5%) and Raynaud’s phenomenon (45.5% vs 30.8%). These findings indicate that PDs in Sjögren’s syndrome patients are associated with more severe subjective symptom burden and higher prevalence of systemic complications, suggesting a strong correlation between mental health status and disease-related symptom severity. ^aP < 0.05. VAS: Visual analogue scale.