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Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with premature mortality. However, one might expect more aggressive treatment (including biologic therapies) and recognition of cardiovascular (CV) sequelae to have improved survival of RA patients in recent years. In this study, U.K. researchers compared all-cause mortality in >20,000 patients with newly diagnosed RA and about 100,000 matched controls. Patients and controls were grouped into an early cohort (1999−2006) or a late cohort (2007−2014) based on year of diagnosis.
During mean follow-up of 3.3 years, all-cause mortality was higher in RA patients than in non-RA patients in both cohorts, but the magnitude of difference between groups was smaller in the late cohort: The absolute mortality diffe…