Nutritional status in rheumatoid arthritis.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease affecting the joints. It has been suggested that obesity increases the likelihood of RA development lowers the chance to achieve low disease activity and disease remission. The purpose of the study was to analyze the nutritional status of a cohort of persons with RA and compare to cohorts of persons with other arthritis and without. METHODS AND RESULTS: We used the NHANES database from 2015 to 2018, assessing anthropometric data, body composition, micronutrients, bone metabolism, protein content and laboratory data from those participants; and to compared to others without arthritis or with other forms of arthritis. We included 19,225 participants, with an estimation of population size of 637,323,765 and female preponderance of 52% and an average age of 38 ± 0,4 yrs. RA had an incidence of 4.5% and other arthritis (OA) of 15%. There was a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity, central obesity and percentage of body fat in RA and OA. Obesity related conditions such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, and hypertension were more prevalent in those participants. Fasting glucose levels, oral glucose tolerance test at 2 h, insulin levels and HbA1c were all significantly higher in persons with RA and OA. CONCLUSION: The higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome together with the inflammatory state of RA, constitute important cardiovascular risk factors, which should be addressed aggressively preferably by primary prevention.