Association of Cardiovascular Outcomes With Low-Dose Glucocorticoid Prescription in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Many guidelines recommend limiting glucocorticoids in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but 40% of patients remain on glucocorticoids long term. We evaluated the cardiovascular risk of long-term glucocorticoid prescription by studying patients on stable disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs).

Methods

Using two claims databases, we identified patients with RA on stable DMARD therapy for >180 days. Proportional hazards models with inverse-probability weights and clustering to account for multiple observations were used to estimate the effect of glucocorticoid dose on composite cardiovascular outcomes (stroke or myocardial infarction [MI]).

Results

There were 135,583 patients in Medicare and 39,272 in Optum's de-identified Clinformatics Data Mart

SUBMITTER: Coburn BW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11521768 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature