Respiratory and Cardiovascular Mortality Higher in RA Women Save

Using data from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), Sparks and colleagues analyzed 119,209 women beginning in 1976. The identified 964 incident RA cases and 28,808 deaths during 36 years of prospective follow-up. This included 307 women with RA who died, 80 (26%) from cancer, 70 (23%) from CVD, and 44 (14%) were respiratory causes.

Women with RA had increased total mortality (hazard ratio [HR] 1.40, 95%CI 1.25-1.57) compared to those without RA, independent of mortality risk factors including smoking. RA was associated with significantly increased respiratory (HR 2.06, 95%CI 1.51-2.80) and cardiovascular mortality (HR 1.45, 95%CI 1.14-1.83), but not cancer mortality (HR 0.93, 95%CI 0.74-1.15). For women with seropositive RA, respiratory-related mortality was nearly three-fold higher than non-RA women (HR 2.67, 95%CI 1.89-3.77).

While these result mirror that previously reported with RA women having a higher CV mortaility risk, the findings of higher rates of pulmonary related mortality in this cohort is new and unexplained and, like CV mortality, was higher in those who were seropositive.