Urinary tract infections in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Co-morbidity from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has recently focussed on outcomes of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, but serious infections are an increasingly well-recognised complication of RA. Recent work has demonstrated how the incidence of pneumonia can be reduced in RA, but little attention has been paid to the incidence of urinary tract infection (UTI) in RA or to the associated co-morbidity. The aim of this study was to describe the incidence of UTI leading to hospitalisation in a large cohort of patients with RA and investigate which factors contributed to this.