COPENHAGEN — Patients with rheumatoid arthritis have a substantially higher prevalence of peripheral artery disease than do similar people without rheumatoid arthritis, based on a case-control study with 101 subjects.
PAD “should not be overlooked in rheumatoid arthritis patients,” Dr. Suzan Abou-Raya said at the annual meeting of the European Congress of Rheuma-tology. RA patients “should be regularly screened [for PAD] to help reduce their incidence of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality,” said Dr. Abou-Raya of the University of Alexandria (Egypt).
The study enrolled 64 consecutive RA patients (38 women), with an average age of 55 years and an average RA duration of 12 years. The patients had no history of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Abou-Raya and her associates also enrolled 37 healthy controls.
The researchers assessed PAD by the ankle brachial index (ABI). An ABI ratio of 0.9 or less in an artery meant it was obstructed; a ratio of 1.0 to less than 1.3 was normal, and a ratio of 1.3 or greater meant an incompressible artery. Obstructed or incompressible ABIs existed in 19 RA patients (30%) and 2 controls (5%), a statistically significant difference.
In a total of 256 arteries examined in the 64 RA patients, 10 (4%) were obstructed and 20 (8%) were incompressible. Of the 148 arteries examined in the 37 controls, 2 were obstructed (1%) and 1 incompressible (1%).
Dr. Abou-Raya said that she and her associates had no financial disclosures.