MedPage Today meldt:
“Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a significantly increased risk for stroke,” according to research reported at the American College of Rheumatology meeting in Boston, Mass. Christopher J. Edwards, M.D., of Southampton University Hospitals, in Southampton, England, and colleagues found, “[i]n a review of data on more than 33,000 patients with RA and nearly 100,000 controls treated over a 15-year period,” patients with RA “had a 67 percent higher risk for stroke than healthy controls.” Furthermore, the “oral corticosteroid prednisolone, which is used to treat RA in Europe, was…associated with about a 30 percent increase in risk of stroke compared with non-use,” reported the researchers. The researchers “also saw a nonsignificant trend toward higher stroke risk among patients on methotrexate, but not among those on other disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.”
