Improving Cardiovascular Trends in Rheumatoid Arthritis Save

 Myasoedova and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic have reported their new data that demonstrates improving cardiovascular (CV) mortality rates in current RA patients treated with modern drugs.

They studied 813 RA patients (mean age 55.9 years; 68% female). In patients with incident RA during the 2000–2007 period, the 10-year CV mortality was 2.8% (95% CI: 0.4%, 5.2%) and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality was 1.2% (1.0, 1.4%). These numbers demonstrate significant improvement when compared to patients diagnosed in 1990–1999. Lower rates of CV outcomes included the overall CV death rate (HR=0.43; 95% CI: 0.19, 0.94; p=0.035); and CHD death (HR 0.21; 95% CI: 0.05, 0.95).

Importantly, the lowering of RA death rates now show them to not be different than the non-RA cohort (general population).