Background/Purpose: The increased risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is well established. However, there are relatively few contemporary cohort studies with long term follow up studying this risk.

Methods: The CARRÉ study is an ongoing prospective cohort study investigating cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in 353 patients with longstanding RA. Cardiovascular end points, defined as a verified medical history of coronary, cerebral or peripheral arterial disease, were assessed at baseline, 3, 10 and now 15 years of follow up. Incidence density rates per 100 patient years were calculated and cox regression analyses were performed to investigate the associations between baseline characteristics and incident CV disease.

Results: During 15 years of follow up 99 (28%) individuals developed at least one CV event.  The mean follow up time was 9.0 ± 4.1 years with a total time at risk of 3186 patient years. This resulted in an incidence rate of 3.1 per 100 patient-years. Risk factors for developing a CV event were an elevated blood pressure, dyslipidemia and renal dysfunction after adjustment for age, gender, prevalent CVD.

Conclusion: The incidence rate was 3.1 CV events per 100 person years in RA patients approximately double that of the general population (Peters et al. 2009). Further research will include a direct comparison of these patients to a control group representative of the general population to generate hazard ratios of CV events in this study population.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/the-incidence-of-cardiovascular-events-in-patients-with-rheumatoid-arthritis-a-15-years-observational-cohort-study/