Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic inflammatory, autoimmune, chronic disease which mainly affects peripheral joints. Recent epidemiological studies have suggested that RA is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular (CV) diseases, and RA patients are 30?60% more likely to develop (CV) diseases, that are characterized as the most important cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with RA. The most likely explanation for this is the process of endothelial dysfunction and accelerated atherosclerosis that occur in these patients secondary to chronic inflammation and also to a higher prevalence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors. The presence of metabolic syndrome (MS), also known as insulin resistance syndrome, characterized by the combination of cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension, obesity, high blood glucose, insulin resistance (IR) and dyslipidemia, confers a greater cardiovascular morbidity than the sum of the risks associated with each individual component. Its etiology remains elusive, but studies point to IR as the main mediator in the pathophysiology of MS. Multiple metabolic pathways have been proposed to connect IR and compensatory hyper insulinemia to other metabolic risk factors.