Tag Archives: rheumatoid arthritis

CVD prevention past and present Dr Shahed Ahmad from NHS England addresses the conference The scale of CVD deaths, currently 136,000 per year in the UK1 and similar in number to the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, was highlighted by Dr Shahed Ahmad (NHS England) in his role as National Clinical Director for CVD. He emphasised the importance of tackling CVD as if it were a pandemic. Rather than needing to create vaccines, he said we already have the necessary therapeutics to reduce CVD but these need robust application to our populations. He signposted the CVDPREVENT website2 with its wealth of open access primary care data on metrics, su

Stat tests loaded into the VITROS XT 7600 Moderate alcohol consumption does not protect against stroke Blood pressure and stroke risk increase steadily with increasing alcohol intake, and previous claims that one to two alcoholic drinks a day might protect against stroke are not borne out by new evidence from a genetic study involving 160,000 adults. Studies of East Asian genes, where two common genetic variants strongly affect what people choose to drink, show that alcohol itself directly increases blood pressure and the chances of having a stroke, according to a new study published in The Lancet (doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31772-0). Researc

Atherosclerosis and inflammation It is not clearly understood why patients with rheumatoid arthritis should suffer accelerated atherosclerosis. Traditional modifiable risk factors alone are insufficient to explain the excess cardiovascular risk.3-5 Part of the answer is that rheumatoid arthritis causes chronic systemic inflammation, which may accelerate the atherosclerotic process. Atherosclerosis is essentially an inflammatory disease, with levels of different biomarkers of inflammation such as C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6, and N-terminal prohormone B-type natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP) correlating closely with subsequent cardiac