Scarno A, Perrotta FM, Cardini F, Carboni A, Annibali G, Lubrano E, Spadaro A. Beyond the joint: Subclinical atherosclerosis in rheumatoid arthritis. World J Orthop 2014; 5(3): 328-335 [PMID: 25035836 DOI: 10.5312/wjo.v5.i3.328]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Antonio Spadaro, Professor, UOC Medicina E, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Specialità Mediche, Sapienza - Università di Roma - Azienda Policlinico Umberto I, Viale del Policlinico 155, 00161 Rome, Italy. a.spadaro.reuma@virgilio.it
Research Domain of This Article
Rheumatology
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Antongiulio Scarno, Francesca Cardini, UOC Medicina E, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Specialità Mediche, Sapienza - Università di Roma - Azienda Policlinico Umberto I, 00161 Rome, Italy
Fabio Massimo Perrotta, Alessia Carboni, Gianmarco Annibali, Antonio Spadaro, UOC di Reumatologia, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Specialità Mediche, Sapienza-Università di Roma - Azienda Policlinico Umberto I, 00161 Rome, Italy
Ennio Lubrano, Academic Rheumatology Unit, Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this paper.
Correspondence to: Antonio Spadaro, Professor, UOC Medicina E, Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Specialità Mediche, Sapienza - Università di Roma - Azienda Policlinico Umberto I, Viale del Policlinico 155, 00161 Rome, Italy. a.spadaro.reuma@virgilio.it
Telephone: +39-06-49974642 Fax: +39-06-49974642
Received: December 24, 2013 Revised: March 12, 2014 Accepted: April 25, 2014 Published online: July 18, 2014 Processing time: 206 Days and 23.8 Hours
Abstract
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease associated with increased cardiovascular risk and higher mortality in respect to general population. Beyond joint disease, inflammation is the major determinant of accelerated atherosclerosis observed in rheumatoid arthritis. We review the relationship between inflammation, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular risk in rheumatoid arthritis, focusing on the assessment of subclinical atherosclerosis by functional and morphological methods. These tools include flow mediated dilatation, carotid intima-media thickness, ankle/brachial index, coronary calcium content, pulse wave analysis and serum biomarker of subclinical atherosclerosis.
Core tip: In this paper we briefly review the role of subclinical atherosclerosis in rheumatoid arthritis, its relationship with inflammatory process and the current available method to detect early atherosclerotic changes.
