Background Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) are at increased risk of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) probably due to immune system activation or RA treatment with steroids.[1] However the pathology of DM in RA is not fully understood.

Objectives To define the prevalence of DM in our RA patients population. Furthermore, to clarify the role of steroid treatment to induce DM in the RA patients.

Methods All patients with diagnosis of RA who were registered in Danish Danbio Registry at time of study, Nov 2016, were included. To find the concurrent DM, patients' medical records including past medical history and lab tests (Hemoglobin A1c and Blood Sugar) were reviewed. In addition, year of DM as well as RA diagnoses were extracted from Fyns Diabetes Database and Danbio respectively to the extent that data were available. Patients' drug histories were searched for information about steroid treatment if diagnosis of RA was made prior to diagnosis of DM.

Results Of 1035 patients with diagnosis of RA, 104 (10%) patients had DM. Of 104 RA patients with DM, data regarding the year of diagnosis for both RA and DM was found in 55 patients which of them 15 patients were diagnosed with RA before DM, one patient was diagnosed with both DM and RA at the same year and 39 patients were diagnosed with RA after DM. However, only one patient, of those who were firstly diagnosed with RA, was prescribed prednisolone during the time period between diagnoses of RA and thereafter DM. Of 15 patients with prior diagnosis of RA to DM, 13 patients were diagnosed according to 1987 classification criteria (Old) for RA and 2 patients were diagnosed according to 2010 classification criteria (New). Out of 39 patients where DM was diagnosed before RA, 10 patients was diagnosed based on the old criteria and 29 patients was diagnosed based on the new RA criteria [Fig 1A and 1B]. Patients with firstly diagnosed DM were more often diagnosed according to the new RA criteria and, on the contrary, patients with latterly diagnosed DM were more often diagnosed with old RA criteria (p<0.001).

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Conclusions The prevalence of DM in this RA population (10%) was about twice of Danish population (5.7%). The role of steroid treatment in which to what extent increases the risk of DM is not clear, however in this study it was negligible, why we propose that the pathology of DM in RA patients most importantly deals with the role of immune system activation namely Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha and not the treatment modality i.e. steroids.

References

1. Jiang P, Li H, Li X. Diabetes mellitus risk factors in rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin Exp Rheumatol 2015;33:115–21.

References

Acknowledgements We thank Mrs. Maryam Mousavi for her contribution to data collection.

Disclosure of Interest None declared