The rise in obesity is considered one of the epidemics of modern life. Now new evidence is emerging that women who are significantly overweight may have a higher risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic believe they have established a link between obesity and the autoimmune disorder after studying more than 800 patients with the condition, a disorder that causes the immune system to attack the tissue of the joints. Women are more likely than men to develop the condition.
However, the research team stress that their findings – published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research – do not explain precisely how obesity causes an individual to develop the condition with further research required into the link.
The Mayo study compared the medical records of 813 adults with rheumatoid arthritis with 813 adults of the same gender and age, with weight, height and whether they smoked or not all taken into account. Around a third of all patients were obese and of those patients, almost two-thirds were women.
From 1985-2007, cases of rheumatoid arthritis increased by 9.2 per 100,000 women and obesity was considered to have played a part in almost half of those cases. While smoking remains a significant risk factor in developing the condition, the researchers did not consider smoking to be relevant in this study because the numbers who smoked did not change markedly over the time period they examined.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a particularly painful condition where the joints become inflamed because the immune system turns on the body, affecting all of the limbs and causing a general feeling of ill health and tiredness in the patient.
Studies have already revealed that fat tissues and cells play a part in inflammation and the latest research indicates that obesity can also affect the autoimmune system. Obesity is already linked to life-limiting conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and has become the focus of health campaigns to reduce the incidences of obesity in the population.
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