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. 2021 May;7(2):e001568.
doi: 10.1136/rmdopen-2021-001568.

Cardiovascular risk factors in gout, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis: a cross-sectional survey of patients in Western Sweden

Anton Jonatan Landgren  1   2 , Mats Dehlin  3 , Lennart Jacobsson  3 , Ulrika Bergsten  4 , Eva Klingberg  3
Affiliations

Cardiovascular risk factors in gout, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis: a cross-sectional survey of patients in Western Sweden

Anton Jonatan Landgren et al. RMD Open. 2021 May.

Abstract

Objectives: We aimed to compare traditional (trad) cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) among patients with gout, psoriatic arthritis (PsA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) stratified by sex.

Methods: A survey was sent to patients with gout (n=1589), PsA (n=1200), RA (n=1246) and AS (n=1095). Patients were retrieved from Sahlgrenska University Hospital, the hospitals of Uddevalla and Skövde, and 12 primary care centres in Western Sweden. The prevalence of self-reported trad-CVRFs was compared between diagnoses by age standardisation with the 2018 population of Sweden as the standard population.

Results: In total, 2896 (56.5%) of 5130 patients responded. Hypertension was the most frequently found comorbidity, reported by 65% of patients with gout, 41% with PsA, 43% with RA and 29% with AS. After age standardisation, women and men with gout had significantly more obesity (body mass index ≥30 kg/m2), hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia and multiple trad-CVRFs, compared with those with PsA, RA and AS. Obesity was significantly more common in PsA than in RA. In women, obesity, hypertension and multiple trad-CVRFs were more frequently reported in PsA than in RA and AS, whereas similar prevalence of CVRFs and coexistence of multiple trad-CVRFs were found in men with PsA, RA and AS.

Conclusions: Women and men with gout had the highest prevalence of trad-CVRFs. Differences in occurrence of CVRFs by sex were found in patients with PsA, RA and AS. In women, patients with PsA had higher occurrence of trad-CVRFs than those with RA and AS, whereas in men the distribution of CVRFs was similar in PsA, RA and AS.

Keywords: ankylosing spondylitis; epidemiology; gout; psoriatic arthritis; rheumatoid arthritis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Patient selection. AS, ankylosing spondylitis; PsA, psoriatic arthritis; RA, rheumatoid arthritis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Age-standardised prevalence and comparison between different IJDs for different levels of multiple traditional (trad) CVRFs in women (ages 45–89 years, n=960). (B) Age-standardised prevalence and comparison between different IJDs for different levels of multiple trad-CVRFs in men (ages 30–89 years, n=1643). AS, ankylosing spondylitis; CVRF, cardiovascular risk factor; IJD, inflammatory joint disease; PsA, psoriatic arthritis; RA, rheumatoid arthritis. # Body mass index ≥30 kg/m2, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia, current smoking, total sitting time ≥7 hours per day+physical activity ≤3 hours per week.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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