Prevalence of dyslipidemia and its association with disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis attending Rizgary Teaching Hospital in Erbil City

Abstract

Background and objective: This study aimed to measure the prevalence of dyslipidemia in patients with rheumatoid arthritis compared with healthy control people and find out the correlation between dyslipidemia and disease activity.Methods: A prospective case-control was done. A total of 100 female patients with rheumatoid arthritis were included in the study. This study was conducted at the Rheumatology Out-patient Clinic in Rizgary Teaching Hospital, Erbil City over seven months from April 2013 to October 2013. Patients who fulfilling the 1987 revised American College of Rheumatology and 2010 American College of Rheumatology/European League against rheumatism classification criteria for rheumatoid arthritis and 100 healthy female age-matched controls with the mean age for both groups being 45. Fasting lipid profiles of cases and controls were estimated after an overnight fasting of 12 hours. Association between lipid profile and disease activity using disease activity score DAS 28, inflammatory markers (CRP and ESR) was also determined. Results: Rheumatoid arthritis patients showed a higher prevalence of associated dyslipidemia (47%) in comparison to control (5%), P = 0.004. There was a significant reduction in serum high density lipoproteins (P = 0.04), with significant elevation of serum total cholesterol, triglyceride, low density lipoprotein and very low density lipoprotein (P = 0.001, 0.004, 0.04 and 0.05, respectively) in comparison to controls. There was a significant relation between disease activity score 28 and serum high density lipoproteins (P <0.001) and there was a significant relation between ESR and triglyceride (P = 0.05).Conclusion: is frequent among the patients with rheumatoid arthritis and highly associated with active rheumatoid arthritis. Serum high density lipoproteins significantly reduced while other parameters of lipid profiles significantly increased in comparisons to control.