RESEARCH - RA patients and diabetics have similar cardiovascular risk

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RA Patients and Diabetics Have Similar Cardiovascular Risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Aug 27 - The risk of cardiovascular disease

(CVD) is as high for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients as it is for

patients with type 2 diabetes, Dutch researchers have discovered.

RA patients are known to have an increased cardiovascular risk

compared to the general population, but the magnitude of this risk was

not known, Dr. T. Nurmohamed, of VU University Medical Center,

Amsterdam, and colleagues write in the September issue of the ls

of the Rheumatic Diseases.

To learn more about the risk for CVD -- including coronary, cerebral,

and peripheral arterial disease -- in RA patients and how it compares

to CVD risk in diabetics, the investigators determined the prevalence

of CVD in three groups of patients. The first consisted of 353

randomly selected outpatients with RA in the Cardiovascular Research

and Rheumatoid Arthritis study, ages 50 to 75. The second and third

groups were drawn from the Hoorn study, a population-based study of

glucose metabolism and other CVD risk factors: 194 patients with type

2 diabetes, and 258 nondiabetics to serve as controls.

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Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/708070

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