Male rheumatoid arthritis patients at substantially higher risk for cardiovascular mortality in comparison to women.

BACKGROUND: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are at an increased risk for developing cardiovascular diseases. While advice regarding cardiovascular risk screening and management in RA patients has been incorporated in several guidelines in recent years, its implementation and adherence is still poor. OBJECTIVES: To assess the cardiovascular disease risk in new diagnosed RA patients and evaluate whether advice to initiate preventive medical treatment of high risk patients was followed. METHODS: All patients with a recent diagnosis of RA, aged 40-70 years, were screened between May 2019 and December 2022 for cardiovascular diseases and risk factors within the first year after diagnosis at the outpatient rheumatology clinic, as part of standard care. Screening included a physical examination with blood pressure measurement, and laboratory tests with lipid profile tests. All patients and their general practitioner (GP) received an overview with their cardiovascular risk profile and a calculated 10-year cardiovascular mortality risk. Cardiovascular risk was defined as low (<1%), intermediate (1-5%), high (5-10%) and very high (>10%). The national pharmacy network was consulted to check whether or not patients started preventive medication after screening. RESULTS: A total of 125 RA patients was included in this study. The mean age was 56 years and 78% was female. Median RA disease duration at screening was 6 months. Six patients (5%) indicated to have been screened before, and used antihypertensive medication. During screening, hypertension was found in 57% of male patients and 43% of female patients and dyslipidemia was found in 36% in male and 32% in female patients. 46% of male patients and 21% of female patients currently smoked. A high or very high 10-year cardiovascular mortality risk was found in 50% of male patients, but in only 4% of female patients. Only 26% of (very) high risk patients started antihypertensive or statin medication after screening. CONCLUSIONS: An increased cardiovascular disease risk is often present in newly diagnosed RA patients, especially male patients, with a large proportion having undiagnosed and untreated hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. Even with structural screening and informing of the patients and GPs, treatment of cardiovascular risk factors in high risk patients remains insufficient. CV risk screening needs to be part of standard care for RA patients, with clear agreement on the responsibilities between primary and secondary care. Awareness of the importance of CVD risk screening needs to improve among both RA patients themselves and the GPs to ultimately reduce the cardiovascular burden of our patients. Obviously, a better collaboration between GPs and rheumatologists is urgently needed to lower the cardiovascular burden of our patients.

In RA patients without prevalent CVD, incident CVD is mainly associated with traditional risk factors: A 20-year follow-up in the CARRÉ cohort study.

OBJECTIVES: To extend our investigation of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients to a follow up of more than 20 years, with a special focus on patients without prevalent CVD. METHODS: The CARRÉ study is an ongoing prospective cohort study on CV endpoints in RA patients. Results were compared to those of a reference cohort (n = 2484) enriched for type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Hazard ratios (HR) for RA and DM patients compared to non-RA/-DM controls were calculated with cox proportional hazard models, and adjusted for baseline SCORE1 (estimated 10-year CVD mortality risk based on CV risk factors). RESULTS: 238 RA patients, 117 DM patients and 1282 controls, without prevalent CVD at baseline were included. Analysis of events in these patients shows that after adjustment, no relevant 'RA-specific' risk remains (HR 1.16; 95%CI 0.88 - 1.53), whereas a 'DM-specific' risk is retained (1.73; 1.24 - 2.42). In contrast, adjusted analyses of all cases confirm the presence of an 'RA-specific' risk (1.50; 1.19 - 1.89). CONCLUSIONS: In RA patients without prevalent CVD the increased CVD risk is mainly attributable to increased presence of traditional risk factors. After adjustment for these factors, an increased risk attributable to RA only was thus preferentially seen in the patients with prevalent CVD at baseline. As RA treatment has improved, this data suggests that the 'RA-specific' effect of inflammation is preferentially seen in patients with prevalent CVD. We suggest that with modern (early) treatment of RA, most of the current increased CVD risk is mediated through traditional risk factors.