Interesting paper on RA + CV Disease | Arthritis Information

 

Was just doing a google search using:

"vascular inflammation" "blood pressure" rheumatoid

And found this paper:

http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/46/2 /183

My reasons are not important but I found a really interesting and pretty well written paper about the relationships of those conditions in conjunction with the increased risk of death due to cardiovascular disease in RA patients.

The paper really looks at the RA patient as a whole and not simply our RA symptoms...but suggests doctors begin to treat RA patients similar to how diabetic patients are monitored for their whole health in an effort to stem the tide of secondary damage due to the disease.

I thought I would pass this along not only to make some people who moght otherwise not understand the true dangers of RA but also to print out for their own doc. I would take a copy to your doc and actually talk about it with them. The paper is not over the head of a person with RA because we have no choice but to learn these things in order to make sure our doc's do not accidently, well, kill us...hehehehe...I laugh in a gallows humor fashon because, well, we have no choice...our choice is to either "...get used to it...or get over it..." in accepting our health future...the sooner one stops living in both denial and fear I feel, the sooner each individual life will improve. even for those who have fought this disease for decades as I and many others here have.

I hope the paper is of some use to others here...

BreckLundin39252.858587963

Here, Here!

Pip

Wow, that was just totally depressing. if one thing does not get us,
something else will. This disease is a nightmare. How do you get past all
the diseases that can occur as a result of having RA? It is a lose lose
situation from the sounds of that article. That was totally depressing. Just the title got me. I guess we're screwed either way. Just one question, I've heard (and read) that RA and our meds can affect our hearts. Does anyone here ever get any kind of heart monitoring done? ALso, how often does everyone here have routine xrays? I haven't had xrays since diagnosis a little over a year ago. i guess after reading that article I am wondering are our dr's waiting until some other ailment creeps up on us or are they trying to prevent complications?Uncontrolled inflammation is a big cause of the health problems associated with RA. It increases the risk of Lymphoma and of Atherosclerosis. It is, in my opinion, extremely important to get the inflammation caused by RA under control...

Rheumatoid arthritis patients with the most severe disease are roughly 70 times more likely to develop lymphoma, a type of cancer, than patients with mild disease, according to new research from Sweden.

http://www.webmd.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/news/20060227/seve re-arthritis-cancer-risk

To shed light on the link between chronic inflammation and atherosclerosis, a team of researchers in Norway and the United States, affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, focused on the aortas of recent recipients of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, comparing biopsy specimens from patients with inflammatory rheumatic disease to those from patients without it. Their study, presented in the June 2007 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, affirms inflammatory rheumatic disease and smoking as independent predictors of vessel wall inflammation. The vascular inflammation might be a factor that promotes atherosclerosis and the formation of aneurysms.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070525074551.ht m


Lynn
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