Managing comorbidities of inflammatory rheumatic diseases

Patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases often suffer from considerable comorbidities that can arise due to the chronic systemic inflammatory activity of the rheumatic disease itself, disorders of immune defense, or as a result of antirheumatic treatment; they can also occur independently. For example, almost 50% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis already exhibit two further chronic diseases at the time of initial manifestation. With regard to the elevated mortality observed in patients with rheumatism, particularly cardiovascular morbidity and increased predisposition to infections are of note. In addition, this article addresses further important possible concomitant diseases, i.e., osteoporosis and tumor diseases. A ground rule is to identify comorbidities and treat them just as diligently as the underlying rheumatic disease so that the patient with rheumatism should be accompanied by an interdisciplinary team of internists during each phase of the disease. Effective control of the systemic inflammatory activity may serve to reduce the risk of certain cardiovascular and neoplastic comorbidities.