Rheumatoid arthritis and cognition dysfunction: lack of association with cumulative glucocorticoid use.

To study if cumulative glucocorticoid use could be related to cognitive impairment in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. A sample of 60 RA patients and 64 controls were studied for the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and depression scale (using CES-D or Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale). RA patients also filled a visual analogic scale (VAS) of pain and had disease activity evaluated by DAS-28 ESR (disease activity score using erythrocyte sedimentation rate). Clinical and treatment data, including cumulative dose of glucocorticoid, were collected from the charts. Patients with RA had more cognitive impairment and depression than controls ( = .002 and .03, respectively). A weak and negative association of MMSE with VAS of pain was found (rho= -0.16; 95%CI = 0.49-0.004;  = .04) but not with depression and cumulative glucocorticoid doses ( = .22 and  = .52, respectively). Although RA patients have more cognitive impairment than controls, no correlation of this problem with cumulative glucocorticoid doses was found.