Clinical studyEffects of antirheumatic therapy on serum lipid levels in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a prospective study☆
Section snippets
Study patients and design
Eligible patients were at least 18 years of age and had newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis that met the 1987 American Rheumatism Association criteria (14). We excluded patients if they had received corticosteroids or disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs before the study or if they had a clinical condition that affects lipid profiles, such as diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, hypothyroidism, nephrotic syndrome, alcoholism, chronic liver disease, Cushing syndrome, or obesity (body mass index
Results
Thirty-seven women and 5 men were enrolled, with a mean (± SD) age of 43 ± 12 years (range, 22 to 69 years) and a mean duration of rheumatoid arthritis of 27 ± 16 months. Twenty-seven patients (64%) were classified as responders (Table 1) according to the 20% improvement in rheumatoid arthritis activity criteria. Although all rheumatoid arthritis activity measures at baseline tended to be higher among responders, the only statistically significant difference was in C-reactive protein level (
Discussion
Our objective was to determine whether treating rheumatoid arthritis can reverse adverse lipid profiles in these patients. We followed patients with newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis who had not been treated with corticosteroids or disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs at baseline for 12 months. Patients received usual antirheumatic care; 64% of them achieved the American College of Rheumatology criteria for a 20% improvement by the end of the study. The improvement in several components of
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Drs. Fred Wolfe and John D. Seeger for their valuable review of the manuscript and Ms. Chan-Sook Shin for her research assistance.
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This study was supported by a research grant (1999) for research instructor at Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.