Does Acute calcium pyrophosphate deposition arthritis doubles fracture risk?

At the annual ACR Convergence 2023, researchers unveiled findings from the inaugural study on fractures and calcium pyrophosphate deposition disease (CPPD) , shedding light on a doubled fracture risk in patients with acute calcium pyrophosphate crystal arthritis. Calcium pyrophosphate deposition (CPPD) disease arises when calcium pyrophosphate (CPP) crystals form near cartilage cells, often culminating in joint inflammation, pain, and swelling. Sometimes likened to gout due to clinical similarities, CPPD remains a less understood facet of inflammatory arthritis.

Intrigued by the relationship between CPPD disease and fracture risk, rheumatologist Dr. Sara Tedeschi and her colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, in collaboration with researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin, embarked on a study to unravel this connection.

To delve deeper, Tedeschi and her team conducted a matched cohort study, harnessing electronic health record (EHR) data from the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. The study featured over 1,100 patients who had experienced at least one episode of acute CPP crystal arthritis, the inflammatory form of CPPD, between 1991 and 2017. They were matched with more than 3,300 comparators who did not have acute CPP crystal arthritis, although they might have had other forms of arthritis.

The research uncovered a fracture rate twice as high in the acute CPP crystal arthritis cohort compared to the comparator group after adjusting for traditional risk factors: 11.2 per 1,000 person-years versus 5.6 per 1,000 person-years.

Ref: AMERICAN COLLEGE OF RHEUMATOLOGY

FUNDER: NIH's National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases