Rheumatoid arthritis: an autoimmune disease with female preponderance and cardiovascular risk equivalent to Diabetes Mellitus: Role of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance.

Rheumatoid arthritis: an autoimmune disease with female preponderance and cardiovascular risk equivalent to Diabetes Mellitus: Role of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance. Inflamm Allergy Drug Targets. 2014 Jan 31; Authors: Mavrogeni S, Dimitroulas T, Buccareli-Ducci C, Ardoin S, Sfikakis PP, Kolovou G, Kitas GD Abstract Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic, inflammatory disease with female preponderance, characterized by severe articular and extraarticular manifestations. Cardiovascular (CV) disease in RA usually occurs a decade earlier than age- and sex-matched controls and patients with RA are twice more likely to develop myocardial infarction irrespective of age, history of prior CVD events and traditional CV risk factors. It has been shown that atherosclerotic CV disease in RA shares similarities with CV disease in diabetes mellitus (DM) in terms of clinical presentation and preclinical atherosclerosis. In addition to atherosclerosis, RA also increases risk of non-ischemic heart failure, valvular disease and myopericardial disease. Therefore, RA is considered at least a cardiovascular equivalent to diabetes mellitus Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), a non-invasive, nonradiating technique, and due to its capability to perform tissue characterisation, can effectively identify CVdisease acuity and etiology during the course of RA. CMR, by using a combination of function evaluation, oedema-fibrosis detection and stress perfusion-fibro...
Source: Inflammation and Allergy Drug Targets - Category: Allergy & Immunology Authors: Tags: Inflamm Allergy Drug Targets Source Type: research