Metabolic syndrome correlates with disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis patients - (14/08/06)
Document Actions
In a controlled, cross-sectional study of 200 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and 400 age- and sex-matched healthy controls from Crete, the overall prevalence of the metabolic syndrome assessed by ATP III criteria was 44% and 41%, respectively. Regarding individual MetS components involved in scoring, RA subjects were more likely to have hypo-HDL-emia, whereas controls were more often hypertensive and/or exhibiting enlarged waist diameter. Multivariate logistic regression analysis adjusted for demographics and RA treatment modalities showed moderate- to high RA disease activity (activity score of 28 joints) to be significantly higher in metabolic syndrome patients as compared with healthy controls. These observations provide intriguing insights into possible relationships between concurrent inflammatory processes associated with both RA and MetS (and possibly CVD), although the directionality and degree of overlap of such an association cannot be ascertained from this study.
