Life Expectancy for People with RA Has Not Improved Over Four Decades
In recent decades – and particularly the past several years – improvements in diagnosing and treating RA have eased pain, slowed joint damage, prevented disability and given countless people a new lease on life. But have they lengthened life? A new study says no – at least, not yet
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic conducted a sweeping comparison of mortality trends among RA subjects with those in the general population. Their unsettling results, presented in the November 2007 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, underscore the urgent need to find strategies that will work to reduce the excess mortality – almost half of which are from cardiovascular disease – consistently associated with RA.
“We found no evidence indicating that RA subjects experienced improvements in survival over the last four to five decades” states the study’s leading author, Sherine Gabriel, M.D. “In fact, RA subjects did not even experience the same improvements in survival as their peers without arthritis, resulting in a worsening of the relative mortality in more recent years, and a widening of the mortality gap between RA subjects and the general population throughout time.” 10/29/07
Hear an interview with Arthritis Foundation President and CEO John Klippel, M.D.
Back to Focus on RA
