Gene Linked To Increased Risk Of Developing Inflammatory Arthritis May Also Increase Patients' Risk Of Dying From Cardiovascular Disease

Medical News Today News Article: "Gene Linked To Increased Risk Of Developing Inflammatory Arthritis May Also Increase Patients' Risk Of Dying From Cardiovascular Disease
01 Feb 2008

People with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an inflammatory autoimmune disease, tend to die younger and, largely from cardiovascular disease (CVD). One explanation for this increasingly recognized fact is that inflammation promotes atherosclerosis. A marker of inflammation, elevation of the C-reactive protein (CRP) level has been shown to predict CVD in the general population. However, other highly inflammatory diseases - Crohn's, for example - do not carry the same high risk of premature death from heart disease.

To identify other possible suspects, researchers in the United Kingdom investigated whether genetic variants linked to the likelihood of developing RA might also make patients more likely to die from CVD. Led by Dr. Tracey M. Farragher at the University of Manchester and funded by the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc), the study focused on two genes - HLA-DRB1and PTPN22 - and their interactions with known RA risk factors. The evidence, presented in the February 2008 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis), implicates HLA-DRB1 genotypes, already associated with RA susceptibility and severity, as a predictor of premature death from CVD for inflammatory arthritis patients. For RA patients in particular, having the shared epitope (SE) - a group of HLA-DRB1 alleles with kindred amino acid traits - plus anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) antibodies and current smoking is an especially deadly combination."