Physical and mental fatigue can be assessed by the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-Fatigue) scale. Currently, there is limited evidence on how valid the content of this questionnaire is to assess fatigue experienced by patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

This study investigated patients’ experience with fatigue related to SLE, and whether the FACIT-Fatigue is an appropriate questionnaire to evaluate fatigue in patients with this disease.

This study highlighted several fatigue-related themes that are important to patients with SLE, and its findings support the use of the FACIT Fatigue as an easily understood method of assessing the burden from fatigue in patients with SLE.