Risk of atherosclerosis mediated by inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis

Systemic inflammation is one of the pivotal pathogenetic principles in atherogenesis and progression of atherosclerosis. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) exhibit an increased cardiovascular risk that is not explained by traditional cardiovascular risk factors but rather by a chronic systemic inflammatory reaction. Reduction of inflammatory activity in RA patients was shown to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Besides this specific approach traditional cardiovascular risk factors need to be carefully controlled in order to improve mortality in RA patients; however, this task is difficult to implement in everyday practice as RA patients usually have decisively different medical needs that need to be addressed irrespective of the well-acknowledged limitations of medical resources, such as time and costs.