Time-varying risks of infection in patients as they proceed through the phases of 'pre-RA': results from the Scottish Early RA inception cohort.

Unlabelled: ObjectiveRheumatoid arthritis (RA) develops after progressing through sequential 'pre-RA' phases. The mechanisms driving progression from one phase to the next remain poorly understood. This study examined the longitudinal rates of community and hospital infections in patients during sequential stages of pre-RA and early arthritis.

Frailty in people with rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review of observational studies.

Frailty, an age-related decline in physiological reserve, is an increasingly important concept in the management of chronic diseases. The implications of frailty in people with rheumatoid arthritis are not well understood. We undertook a systematic review to assess prevalence of frailty in people with rheumatoid arthritis, and the relationship between frailty and disease activity or clinical outcomes.

Classification of long-term condition patterns in rheumatoid arthritis and associations with adverse health events: a UK Biobank cohort study.

Purpose: We aimed to classify individuals with RA and ≥2 additional long-term conditions (LTCs) and describe the association between different LTC classes, number of LTCs and adverse health outcomes.

Methods: We used UK Biobank participants who reported RA (n=5,625) and employed latent class analysis (LCA) to create classes of LTC combinations for those with ≥2 additional LTCs. Cox-proportional hazard and negative binomial regression were used to compare the risk of all-cause mortality, major adverse cardiac events (MACE), and number of emergency hospitalisations over an 11-year follow-up across the different LTC classes and in those with RA plus one additional LTC.

Association between risk, duration and cause of hospitalisations in people with rheumatoid arthritis and multimorbidity in the UK Biobank and Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) cohorts: Longitudinal observational study.

Objectives: To investigate association between presence of multimorbidity in people with established and early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and risk, duration and cause of hospitalisations.

Design: Longitudinal observational study.

Setting: UK Biobank, population-based cohort recruited between 2006 and 2010, and the Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA), inception cohort recruited between 2011 and 2015.