Introduction:

There is a significantly higher mortality in Rheumatoid arthritis(RA) patients compared to general population, mostly due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD) like myocardial infarction and stroke. Persistent chronic inflammation due to high disease activity taking its toll on the vascular endothelium along with the higher prevalence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors like dyslipidemia is thought to be responsible for the higher CVD–related morbidity. Another contributing factor could be the widespread use of glucocorticoids, which increase carotid intimal thickening.There are only very few studies in Asian population on the prevalence of dyslipidemia in RA and the effect of corticosteroids on the lipid profile in RA patients. Here we describe the lipid abnormalities in RA patients compared to general population and the effect of corticosteroids on their lipid profile.

Methods:

The study was conducted at a Government Medical College in North Kerala, India. RA Patients aged between 16 and 80 years who satisfied the ACR–EULAR 2010 criteria attending the Rheumatology clinic during a period of 1 year were studied in comparison with age and sex matched controls.

Results:

Thereis statistically significant difference (p value 0.001)in mean total cholesterol level (TC) in the RA group (204.7+42.9 mg/dl) and controls(181.1+40.3 mg/dl). Similar statistically significant difference in the mean LDL cholesterol levels were noted between the RA cases and controls (133.1+39.8 vs 116.7+32(p value 0.006). However there was no statistically significant alteration in lipid profile that could be attributed to steroid use.

Conclusions:

This study highlights the importance of management of lipid abnormalities in RA patients to improve CVD outcome.