LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND — People with rheumatoid arthritis have a consistently higher risk for venous thromboembolism than the general population, but the reasons for this remain unclear, research presented at the
"In the last few years, a new class of drugs, the JAK inhibitors, have emerged in which we have seen a signal of increased VTE risk from a number of studies. And I think that puts a spotlight on our understanding of VTE risk," Galloway said. Confounding is still possible, despite adjusting for multiple factors that included sociodemographic factors; clinical features; and VTE risk factors such as smoking status, alcohol use, thrombophilia, reduced mobility, lower limb fracture, and a family history of VTE if data had been available. There wasn't information on disease activity, for example, and disease duration was used as a surrogate marker for this.
Similar findings were seen across different BMI categories, with the highest risk occurring in those in the lowest BMI group. The aHRs were 1.66, 1.60, and 1.41 for the BMI categories of less than 25 kg/mAs for disease duration, nearly two thirds of the 23,410 adults with RA included in this analysis were included at or within 2 years of a diagnosis of RA, 7.8% within 2-5 years of diagnosis, 9.8% within 5-10 years of diagnosis, and 18.5% at 10 or more years after diagnosis.
Similar findings were also seen when they looked at aHRs for pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis separately.Data on the use of estrogen-based oral contraceptives or HRT were detailed in a virtual poster presentation. In this analysis, there were 16,664 women with and 65,448 without RA, and the average follow-up was 8.3 years.