STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Swedish researchers have linked rheumatoid arthritis to a greater risk of heart attack.
Marie Holmqvist of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and colleagues say their large-scale study indicates a 60 percent increase in heart-attack risk in the fours year following a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.
The study, published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, suggests increased heart-attack risks appear very soon after rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis and were not diminished even if the arthritis was aggressively treated.
"Our research underlines the importance of clinicians monitoring patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis for an increased risk of heart problems, in particular heart attacks. It is also very clear that more research is needed to determine the mechanisms that link these two health conditions," lead author Holmqvist says in a statement. "Our findings emphasize the importance of monitoring a patient's heart risk from the moment they are diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, as the risk rises rapidly in the first few years."
Holmqvist and colleagues determined the risk of heart disease -- in particular heart attacks -- in 7,469 patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis between 1995 and 2006 and 37,024 matched controls without rheumatoid arthritis. The maximum follow-up was 12 years and the median was about four years.
source: upi
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