RA patients at lower risk of incident Diabetes compared to others, finds Study
Rheumatoid Arthritis patients are at lower risk of incident Diabetes compared to general population finds a new study.
Earlier studies have shown that rheumatoid Arthritis increases risk of Diabetes by about 50%.But in a new study researchers have found contrarian findings.
The researchers conducted a study to examine the risk of incident type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) versus the risk among 4 different comparison cohorts.
"Although rheumatoid arthritis is known to be an inflammatory autoimmune disease that affects joints, the condition is also associated with important comorbidities," Piero Ruscitti, Division of Rheumatology, Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy noted. They pointed out that a significant number of patients with rheumatoid arthritis are affected by type 2 diabetes and that cardiometabolic comorbidity remains underdiagnosed and undertreated in these patients. But, in a recent population-based cohort study by Yinzhu Jin et al and his associates published in the Journal of Arthritis Care and Research (an official journal of the American College of Rheumatology and the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals), the authors stated that "patients with RA had a lower rate of incident type 2 DM compared to other cohort groups."
"After adjusting for >40 baseline covariates, we found that RA was associated with a 24–35% lower risk of incident type 2 DM compared to 4 comparison groups," says Yinzhu Jin.
"We selected 4 comparison cohorts with ≥2 disease‐specific diagnoses and ≥1 dispensing of disease‐specific drugs: 1) general non‐RA patients, 2) patients with hypertension, 3) patients with osteoarthritis (OA), and 4) patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA). The index date was the disease‐specific drug dispensing date," he further added.
The researchers studied a total sample of 449,327 RA patients, general non‐RA patients, hypertension, OA or PsA patients for the study and the main result that they declared was - "During the median of 1.6 years of follow‐up, the incidence rate of type 2 DM was the lowest in the RA cohort (7.0 per 1,000 person‐years) and highest (12.3 per 1,000 person‐years) in the hypertension cohort."
The authors concluded that in this large population‐based cohort study, patients with RA had a lower rate of incident type 2 DM compared to the general non‐RA, hypertension, OA, and PsA cohorts.
For the full article click on the link: https://doi.org/10.1002/acr.24343
