1. Are Lipid Ratios Less Susceptible to Change With Systemic Inflammation Than Individual Lipid Components in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis?
- Author
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Toms, Tracey E., Panoulas, Vasileios F., Douglas, Karen M. J., Nightingale, Peter, Smith, Jacqueline P., Griffiths, Helen, Sattar, Naveed, Symmons, Deborah P. M., and Kitas, George D.
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STATINS (Cardiovascular agents) , *ANALYSIS of variance , *CARDIOVASCULAR diseases risk factors , *COMPUTER software , *CONFIDENCE intervals , *STATISTICAL correlation , *EPIDEMIOLOGY , *HYPERLIPIDEMIA , *INFLAMMATION , *LIPIDS , *LONGITUDINAL method , *MULTIVARIATE analysis , *REGRESSION analysis , *RESEARCH funding , *RHEUMATOID arthritis , *STATISTICS , *LOGISTIC regression analysis , *DATA analysis , *MULTIPLE regression analysis , *CROSS-sectional method , *RETROSPECTIVE studies , *DISEASE complications - Abstract
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) associates with excess cardiovascular risk and there is a need to assess that risk. However, individual lipid levels may be influenced by disease activity and drug use, whereas lipid ratios may be more robust. A cross-sectional cohort of 400 consecutive patients was used to establish factors that influenced individual lipid levels and lipid ratios in RA, using multiple regression models. A further longitudinal cohort of 550 patients with RA was used to confirm these findings, using generalized estimating equations. Cross-sectionally, higher C-reactive protein (CRP) levels correlated with lower levels of total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), and high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol ([HDL-C] P ≤ .015), whereas lipid ratios did not correlate with CRP. The findings were broadly replicated in the longitudinal data. In summary, the effects of inflammation on individual lipid levels may underestimate lipid-associated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in RA, thus lipid ratios may be more appropriate for CVD risk stratification in RA. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2011
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