RA Disease Activity Predicts CVD Risk

Individuals with higher rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease activity, as measured by a multi-biomarker disease activity (MBDA) panel, have higher risk of hospitalized infections, myocardial infarction, and coronary heart disease, according to the results of a recent study.

Although RA disease activity has been shown to be associated with serious infections and cardiovascular disease events in previous studies, there is a lack of large-scale population-based analyses on the subject.
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For their study, researchers linked MBDA test scores to Medicare for 77,641  patients with RA. Overall, there were 17,433 and 16,796 patients eligible for analysis of analysis of hospitalized sepsis/pneumonia and myocardial infarction/coronary heart disease, respectively.

Over 16,424 person-years of follow-up, there were 452 sepsis/pneumonia events, 132 myocardial infarction events, and 181 coronary heart disease events. Higher MBDA scores were associated with hazard ratios (HRs) of 1.32 (95% CI 1.23 to 1.41 per 10 unit MBDA score change) for sepsis/pneumonia, and 1.52 (95% CI 0.92 to 2.49) and 1.54 (95% CI 1.01 to 2.34, comparing scores ≥30 vs <30), for myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease, respectively.

“Higher MBDA scores were associated with hospitalized infection, MI and CHD events in a large, predominantly older, US RA population,” the researchers concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Curtis JR, Xie F, Chen L, et al. Biomarker-related risk for myocardial infarction and serious infections in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a population-based study [published online December 21, 2017]. Ann Rheum Dis. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2017-211727.