Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), as known, causes inability in various performance areas mostly in the musculoskeletal. Reduced physical activity, substantial disability and poor general health perception have previously been described in people with RA.

Objectives The aim of this study was to describe the socio-demographic profile, recreational and physical activity and use of free time in a cohort of patients with RA in a specialized clinic.

Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed in a specialized clinic dedicated to care patients with RA. 252 patients were included in the study, which were seen by the area of psychology, which information was collected through semi-structured interviews and non-probability sampling. Descriptive epidemiology was applied for continuous variables, measures of central tendency and dispersion for categorical/qualitative variables and Pearson’s statistics for bi-variated analysis.

Results Total sample of patients was 252, 214 (84.9%) were women and 38 (15.1%) were men. Patients had a DAS28-3.52±0.85 in average. Medium age is 56.9±9 years; 44.4% of patients were medium socio-economical level and the 40.9% were low socio-economical level; 36% was married, 19.8% is divorced, 15.5% is single and others undefined. Related with the occupation, 31% is retired because age and the 17.9% have handicap retirement pay; 19.4% is dedicated to the housekeeping and 31.7% were working. Related to education 19.4% no education, 25% had elementary school, 29% didn’t finish high school, 18.2 were technical and only 8.4% finish high school. Finally, 54% of patients had mixed activities (recreational, housekeeping, intellectual and sports), 12.7% only housekeeping, 12.3% sports, 17.7% others and 3.3% didn’t have any activities because great disability. Women show interest in mixed activities (46.3%), housekeeping (23.4%), sports (11.2%) and others (19.1%). On the other hand, in men were mixed activities (63.2%), sports (18.4%) and others (18.4%). It was established a correlation between a low level of activities and higher disease activity using DAS28 (p<0.008).

Conclusions Men and women using free time had predominantly mixed activities, but men like more make sports and women like more housekeeping; higher DAS28 is correlated with fewer level of recreational activity. According to these findings there is a prevalence of patients with low-medium socio-economical levels in RA which shows a possible correlation of a socio-demographic unfavorable situation with disease.

Disclosure of Interest None Declared