Autoimmune diseases raise cardiovascular, mortality risk

Aug. 29 (UPI) -- A new study from researchers in Spain has found autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis increase risk for cardiovascular disease and death.

Autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis affect between 150,000 and 200,000 people in Spain, and Crohn's and colitis affect about 100,000 people.

Researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute, or IMIM, and IDIAP Jordi Gol conducted the six-year study of nearly 1 million people age 35 to 85 diagnosed with autoimmune diseases but who have no history of cardiovascular disease.

"We wanted to determine whether the risk of suffering a coronary heart disease, stroke, or overall mortality was increased in people suffering autoimmune inflammatory diseases including Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, or ankylosing spondylitis, among other illnesses, and establish the incidence of each pathology," María Grau,a researcher in the IMIM's Cardiovascular Epidemiology research group, said in a press release.

The study, published today in Heart, found that systemic disorders of connective tissue such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis are linked with a greater cardiovascular and overall mortality risk, followed by inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.

"It is believed that the increased risk of cardiovascular problems and mortality in rheumatoid arthritis and lupus is due to the interaction of inflammation, metabolic factors, therapy, and disease-related factors," said Grau. "Therefore developing new tools for predicting cardiovascular events, which incorporate autoimmune inflammatory disease activity biomarkers, could help to reduce the incidence of these events."