Description: People diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis run a greater risk of developing heart disease.


But that risk can be spotted and hopefully modified by using the same criteria used to identify heart-disease risk in the general population, a new study suggests.

Those screening checks include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, older age, and family history of cardiovascular illness. And people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) should be screened using those risk factors as soon as possible following their diagnosis of RA, the study authors said.

""The bottom-line is that RA patients are at increased risk of heart disease,"" said lead researcher Dr. Hilal Maradit Kremers, a research associate with the Mayo Clinic Department of Health Sciences Research in Rochester, Minn.

""But we need to know how can we predict which RA patients are at a higher risk than others, so that we can then put more effort in the prevention of heart disease in these people,"" she added. ""An