Rheumatoid arthritis heightens risk of dangerous leg and lung blood clots

Deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism risk 2 to 3 times greater

2013-08-08

(Press-News.org) Rheumatoid arthritis significantly increases the risk of potentially fatal blood clots in the legs and lungs, reveals a large nationwide study published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Between 11% and 30% of people who develop a blood clot in the legs, known as a deep vein thrombosis or DVT, or a blood clot in the lungs, known as a pulmonary embolism, or PE, die within 30 days of their diagnosis, the evidence suggests.

Several studies have shown that chronic inflammation, which typifies rheumatoid arthritis, is linked to a heightened risk of thickened blood, but rheumatoid arthritis is not generally thought of as a risk factor for DVT or PE, say the researchers.

They therefore tracked the health of most of the population of Taiwan (23.74 million people) through the country's compulsory national insurance scheme between 1998 to 2008, and included a further monitoring period up to the end of 2010, to find out if rheumatoid arthritis increased the risk of potentially fatal blood clots.

Just fewer than 30,000 people developed rheumatoid arthritis during this period, and their details were entered into a national (catastrophic illness) registry of the National Health Insurance Database (NHIRD). By way of comparison, they were matched with almost 117,000 healthy people of the same age and sex.

Three quarters (77%) of those who developed rheumatoid arthritis were women, and the average age at diagnosis was 52. Around one in five were over the age of 65.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis were more likely to have other underlying conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart failure and fractures, than were those in the comparison group.

But even after taking account of these influential factors, and allowing for age, patients with rheumatoid arthritis were still significantly more likely to develop potentially fatal blood clots, the analysis revealed.

They were more than three times as likely to develop a DVT, and twice as likely to develop a PE as those without the condition, the figures showed. Furthermore, rheumatoid arthritis packed the greatest punch in the under 50s, who were almost six times as likely to develop a DVT and more than three times as likely to develop PE than were either middle aged (50 to 65) or older adults.

### [Rheumatoid arthritis increases the risk of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary thromboembolism: a nationwide cohort study Online First doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2013-203380]

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

UW researchers publish study on genome of aggressive cervical cancer that killed Henrietta Lacks, subject of bestselling book

2013-08-08

A team from the University of Washington has unveiled a comprehensive portrait of the genome of the world's first immortal cell line, known as HeLa. The cell line was derived in 1951 from an aggressive cervical cancer that killed Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American tobacco farmer and mother of five – the subject of the 2010 New York Times bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. They will also be the first group to publish under a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy for HeLa genomic data, established through discussions with Lacks' family. The ...

Newly discovered bacterial partnership changes ocean chemistry

2013-08-08

In a discovery that further demonstrates just how unexpected and unusual nature can be, scientists have found two strains of bacteria whose symbiotic relationship is unlike anything seen before. Long, thin, hairlike Thioploca (meaning "sulfur braids" in Spanish) trichomes form chains down into marine sediment, which tiny anammox cells ride down like an elevator. At the bottom, the anammox cells consume the waste products of the Thioploca: nitrite and ammonium, or "fixed" nitrogen. Nitrogen is a crucial building block of life, a prerequisite for photosynthesis. While ...

Access to HeLa cell genome data restored following agreement

2013-08-08

BETHESDA, MD -- The first study to sequence and analyze the entire genome of a HeLa cell line, along with access to its sequence data, has been published today (Wednesday, August 7) in its final version, by G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, an open-access, scientific journal of the Genetics Society of America. The article, "The Genomic and Transcriptomic Landscape of a HeLa Cell Line," by Landry et al., was authored by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and was published in an early online version March 11, 2013. Genomic ...

Regulating electron 'spin' may be key to making organic solar cells competitive

2013-08-08

Organic solar cells that convert light to electricity using carbon-based molecules have shown promise as a versatile energy source but have not been able to match the efficiency of their silicon-based counterparts. Now, researchers have discovered a synthetic, high-performance polymer that behaves differently from other tested materials and could make inexpensive, highly efficient organic solar panels a reality. The polymer, created at the University of Washington and tested at the University of Cambridge in England, appears to improve efficiency by wringing electrical ...

Simple math sheds new light on a long-studied biological process

2013-08-08

One of the most basic and intensively studied processes in biology—one which has been detailed in biology textbooks for decades—has gained a new level of understanding, thanks to the application of simple math to a problem that scientists never before thought could benefit from mathematics. The scientists who made the discovery, published in this week's advance online publication of Nature, found that the process bacteria use to quickly adapt to metabolize preferred energy sources such as glucose—a process called "catabolite repression"—is controlled not just by glucose, ...

Dogs yawn more often in response to owners' yawns than strangers

2013-08-08

Dogs yawn contagiously when they see a person yawning, and respond more frequently to their owner's yawns than to a stranger's, according to research published August 7 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Teresa Romero and colleagues from the University of Tokyo. Pet dogs in the study watched their owner or a stranger yawn, or mimic a yawning mouth movement, but yawned significantly more in response to their owners' actions than to the strangers' yawns. The dogs also responded less frequently to the fake movements, suggesting they have the ability to yawn contagiously. ...

Study suggests pattern in lung cancer pathology may predict cancer recurrence after surgery

2013-08-08

NEW YORK, AUGUST 7, 2013 — A new study by thoracic surgeons and pathologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center shows that a specific pattern found in the tumor pathology of some lung cancer patients is a strong predictor of recurrence. Knowing that this feature exists in a tumor's pathology could be an important factor doctors use to guide cancer treatment decisions. According to the study's authors, the findings offer the first scientific evidence that may not only help surgeons identify which patients are more likely to benefit from less radical lung-sparing ...

Psoriasis patients at increasing risk for range of serious medical conditions

2013-08-08

PHILADELPHIA - Patients with mild, moderate and severe psoriasis had increasingly higher odds of having at least one major medical disease in addition to psoriasis, when compared to patients without psoriasis. Reporting findings in JAMA Dermatology, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, concluded that the severity of disease, as measured by the percentage of body surface area affected by psoriasis, was strongly linked to an increased presence of other diseases affecting the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver and pancreas. The research ...

The temperature tastes just right

2013-08-08

Call it the Goldilocks Principle — animals can survive and reproduce only if the temperature is just right. Too hot and they will overheat. Too cold and they will freeze. To stay in their comfort zone, animals have evolved very sensitive temperature sensors to detect the relatively narrow margin in which they can survive. Until recently, scientists knew little about how these sensors operated. Now, a team of Brandeis University scientists has discovered a previously unknown molecular temperature sensor in fruit flies belonging to a protein family responsible for sensing ...

Cute and armed at the same time

2013-08-08

For the longest time, all that was known about this long-extinct mammal was a few little teeth with striking cusps on their occlusal surfaces. "Paleontologists have been wondering for over a hundred years what the animal that went with these teeth might have looked like," said Prof. Dr. Thomas Martin from the Steinmann-Institut of the University of Bonn. The matter was elucidated when locals found a completely preserved skeleton of the enigmatic mammal in Northeast China, which was then aquired by the Paleontological Museum of Liaoning in Shenyang. Together with Dr. Chang-Fu ...

Pollen counts can be predicted by machine learning models using meteorological data with more than 80% accuracy even a week ahead, for both grass and birch tree pollen, which could be key in effective

Rewriting our understanding of early hominin dispersal to Eurasia

Rising simultaneous wildfire risk compromises international firefighting efforts

Honey bee "dance floors" can be accurately located with a new method, mapping where in the hive forager bees perform waggle dances to signal the location of pollen and nectar for their nestmates

Rheumatoid arthritis heightens risk of dangerous leg and lung blood clots

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: