ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Family Medicine and Primary Care
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1681780
This article is part of the Research TopicLifestyle behaviors and chronic diseases: pathways, interventions, knowledge and public health challengesView all 5 articles
A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEWS WITH SLE PATIENTS FROM THE "LIVING WELL WITH LUPUS" STUDY
Provisionally accepted
Fabiana Infante Smaira1
Bruna Caruso Mazzolani1
Sofia Mendes Sieczkowska1Marina Romero2
Sandra Pasoto3Ana Lúcia De Sá Pinto3Fernanda Rodrigues Lima3
Fabiana Braga Benatti2
Hamilton Roschel1
Mary Beth Weber4
Bruno Gualano1*- 1Universidade de Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
- 2Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
- 3Hospital das Clinicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
- 4Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, United States
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Objectives: "Living Well with Lupus" (LWWL) consisted of a lifestyle intervention program tailored for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and high cardiovascular risk. In the present study, we assessed the maintenance of behavior changes related to physical activity and healthy eating after the six-month LWWL program. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants from the intervention group between 7 and 28 months after the program ended. Using qualitative content analysis, themes regarding behavior maintenance and perceived effects were identified. Results: Our findings suggest that maintaining the new lifestyle behaviors resulted in health benefits such as weight loss, pain reduction, and improved well-being; whereas worsening health, with increased anxiety, fatigue, and pain were reported among those that did not maintain the new behaviors over time. Most importantly, the main barriers to maintaining lifestyle changes included adverse weather conditions, family conflicts, health problems, and high work demands. On the other hand, family and professional support were highlighted as facilitators. Conclusion: These results suggest the importance of ongoing support to promote adherence to lifestyle changes in SLE patients. Integrated interventions with family and professional support are essential for sustaining these changes, highlighting the need for a holistic approach to health promotion for patients with chronic conditions. Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT04431167
Keywords: follow-up, healthy eating, lifestyle intervention, physical activity, systemic lupus erythematosus
Received: 07 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Smaira, Mazzolani, Sieczkowska, Romero, Pasoto, Pinto, Lima, Benatti, Roschel, Weber and Gualano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bruno Gualano, gualano@usp.br
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