Rheumatoid arthritis patients at higher risk of cancer death

But the same study suggests that the chances of developing a carcinoma are similar in people with or without this inflammatory disease.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. March 19, 2007.

People with rheumatoid arthritis are at an increased risk of dying from cancer but are not more likely to develop it, according to a study published in the March Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Researchers analyzed data on 2,105 patients in primary care practices in Norfolk County, England, who were diagnosed with inflammatory polyarthritis between 1990 and 1999. Investigators concluded that most with this diagnosis progressed to rheumatoid arthritis, and these patients had a 40% increased risk of dying of cancer within five years compared with the general population. In this population, a 60% increased risk of developing hematopoietic cancer was detected -- a finding evidenced in previous studies. But the risk of developing other cancers was not amplified.

"Patients with RA who develop cancer have a reduced survival which may be due to several factors," said Dr. Alan Silman, senior author and professor of rheumatic disease epidemiology at the University of Manchester, also in England.

This study is the latest attempt to explain why RA patients have double the risk of death from a wide array of medical conditions. "The data underscore one of the important contributors to morbidity and mortality associated with rheumatoid arthritis," said Jack Cush, MD, chief of rheumatology and clinical immunology at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. He was not affiliated with this project.