Description: Rheumatoid arthritis patients with certain genetic traits may be at increased risk of early death from heart disease or cancer, British researchers report.

The study, published in the May issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, tracked 767 people with rheumatoid arthritis for 18 years. Over that time, 186 of the study participants died. The two major causes of death were cardiovascular disease (28.2 percent) and cancer (24.7 percent).

Of those who died of heart disease or cancer, 29 (32.6 percent) had two genetic variants, called HLA-DRB1 SE. The researchers also found that rheumatoid arthritis patients with two of these variants generally died young than other rheumatoid arthritis patients.

This was especially evident among patients who died of ischemic heart disease --average age of 67.8 years for those with two SE variants. The researchers said they were also surprised to find that patients with the two SE gene types had no clinical