Archives by Author: Elspeth Reeve
Rheumatoid Arthritis Increases the Risk of Heart Disease
Rheumatoid arthritis sets a body at war with itself, as white blood cells attack healthy tissue in the joints. The cost of that war may be greater than previously thought: a study from the Mayo Clinic concludes that people with rheumatoid arthritis are twice as likely to die of heart disease.
Researchers assembled 75 rheumatoid arthritis patients recently diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, and then assembled a control group of 128 cardiovascular patients matched with the first group by sex, age and traditional cardiovascular risk factors, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking, but free of rheumatoid arthritis. A comparison of the two groups’ coronary angiograms (specialized X-ray scans used to diagnose blocked coronary arteries) found that patients with rheumatoid arthritis also had more clogging of the arteries at the time of their initial diagnosis with heart disease than those without. Equally alarming, the Mayo team calculated that the rheumatoid arthritis group had twice the risk of dying from cardiac disease as the control group.
Although the scale of the Mayo study was limited, its conclusions suggest that the same inflammatory processes that fuel the body's attacks on its joints may also make the coronary arteries more vulnerable to atheroscleroris.
From the archive:
02/23/2004 Inflammation, the Body's First Defense, Can Be It's Enemy
12/09/2002 Rheumatoid Arthritis: The other crippingling joint disease
