Assessing Cardiovascular Risk in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with excess cardiovascular risk, but no previous calculator has been shown to reliably quantify risk for this group (Figure 1). To assess the performance of the PREVENT calculator in patients with RA, researchers identified 31,000 individuals with RA and 232,000 matched controls from Veterans Health Administration data. They calculated baseline risk scores and then examined subsequent incidence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) over a mean follow-up of 8 years.

• The observed incidence of ASCVD in patients with RA was more than double the number predicted by PREVENT (standardized incidence ratio [SIR], the ratio of observed to predicted events, 2.2).

• PREVENT underestimated overall c…