It is now known that rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients had significantly higher long-term death rate after myocardial infarction (MI) than did matched MI patients without RA. This was revealed in a review of a population-based cohort of patients. The RA patients also exhibited an increased risk of recurrent ischemia when compared to those patients who did not have RA.
A team of researchers analysed a set of data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, which includes all of the records from health care providers for the population of Olmsted County, Minnesota. They looked specifically at 77 RA patients and 154 age- and sex-matched patients without RA who had an MI between 1979, and 2010.
Overall, around 55 per cent of patients in both cohorts were female. The mean age at MI was 72.4 years old. It was known that there were no significant differences between cohorts regarding MI risk factors such as hypertension, dyslipidaemia, diabetes, smoking status and weight. MI characteristics, severity, and electrocardiogram findings were also known to be similar.
Additionally, the RA patients and the other patients who were unaffected were known to have no differences in treatment during and after MI and in-hospital mortality. Mortality at 30 days post MI and at 1 year post MI was also similar.
The similarities ended for long-term mortality. The authors of the study discovered that during a median follow-up of 2.6 years among the RA cohort, 55 of the patients died. That is compared to the 85 patients who died over a median 2.7 years in the control cohort.
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