Holmqvist ME, Wedrén S, Jacobsson LT et al. Arthritis Rheum 2009;60:2861–9.
An increased prevalence of ischemic heart disease (IHD) has been described in patients with established rheumatoid arthritis (RA), suggesting a cause-and-effect association between IHD and RA. But is there a shared etiology for IHD and RA, which would additionally result in the occurrence of IHD events prior to the onset of RA? In this study, the authors investigated the occurrence of IHD, myocardial infarction, and angina pectoris – and any temporal relationship between these conditions – and the onset of first symptoms of RA.
Data on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and matched healthy controls from the Swedish national EAR (Early Arthritis Register) study (RA patients, n=8454; controls, n=42 267) and the Swedish EIRA (Epidemiology Investigation of RA) case–control study of incident RA (RA patients, n=2025; controls, n=2700) were analyzed in this investigation. The results were linked to information from the nationwide Swedish hospital discharge register on ischemic heart disease (IHD), myocardial infarction (MI), and angina pectoris (AP) based on International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. In the case of patients in the EIRA study, data were additionally evaluated alongside a questionnaire that included questions about smoking, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and the body-mass index.