A major cause of disability and dependency, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease which affects around 0.8% of the population. Ian Bruce, from The University of Manchester (United Kingdom), and colleagues analyzed data collected on 25,455 subjects enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer, Norfolk, UK (EPIC-Norfolk), ages 40-79 years, gathered from 1993 to 1997. When they compared 184 participants who went on to develop arthritis to those who did not, they found that smoking, obesity and having diabetes all increased the risk of developing RA. Submitting that: “Several easily ascertained clinical and lifestyle factors can be used to stratify populations for risk,” the researchers are hopeful their findings may be used to develop a simple screening tool with which to identify patients with a higher risk of developing RA who could be offered advice to reduce their risk.
Lifestyle Factors Precipitate Rheumatoid Arthritis
Lahiri M, Luben RN, Morgan C, Bunn DK, Marshall T, Lunt M, Verstappen SM, Symmons DP, Khaw KT, Wareham N, Bruce IN. “Using lifestyle factors to identify individuals at higher risk of inflammatory polyarthritis (results from the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer-Norfolk and the Norfolk Arthritis Register--the EPIC-2-NOAR Study).” Ann Rheum Dis. 2013 Mar 16.
