Can Heart Attacks be caused by Rheumatoid Arthritis?
The inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis may be responsible for the greater incidence of heart attack amongst rheumatoid arthritis sufferers than in the general population. A Swedish study, presented at the same conference, followed up 7,954 newly-diagnosed patients for ten years, matching them with 38,913 non-affected individuals. When the figures were adjusted to exclude other conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, the RA group was found to have twice the risk of heart attack and heart-related death as the other group – a risk which was not present prior to the onset of rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is known to affect the heart and to increase the risk of atherosclerosis (the hardening of artery walls caused by the deposition of inflexible fatty platelets). A Ray of Hope The data emerging from this conference is rather worrying; clearly more research is urgently needed to discover the origins of this new wave of rheumatoid arthritis amongst wom
