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- Cardiovascular risk
- chronic rheumatic disease
- European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing
- EULAR
- multimorbidity
- recommendations
The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recently updated the recommendations for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk management in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).1 In contrast to the 2009 recommendations which advised to multiply by 1.5 the global CVD risk in the presence of certain RA-specific criteria,2 the 2015/2016 update recommends to multiply by 1.5 the global CVD risk for all patients with RA. It also considers the use of carotid ultrasound to screen asymptomatic atherosclerotic plaques. Indeed, the majority of the CVD events occur in the ‘low’ and ‘intermediate’ risk groups and carotid plaque detection to classify patients improves cardiovascular risk prediction.3 The European Society of Cardiology guidelines classify patients with carotid plaque at very high CVD risk.4 Immediate statin use is indicated in those patients if low-density lipoprotein cholesterol is ≥0.7 g/L.4 In a post hoc analysis, we evaluated the impact of the updated 2015/2016 EULAR CVD recommendations …
Footnotes
Contributors Conceptualisation: CID, JM, PF, JB, BC. Methodology: CID, PF, FR, TM. Software: TM, CID, PF. Formal analysis: CID, AT, TM. Investigation: CID, AT, GdC, JM, BC, PF, FR. Resources: CID, JM, PF, JB, BC. Writing (original draft preparation): CID, AT. Writing (review and editing): JB, FR, GdC, JM, BC, TM, PF. Supervision: CID, BC, PF, JB. Project administration: CID, BC, PF, JB.
Funding MACVIA-LR.
Competing interests CID has received honoraria from BMS, MSD, Pfizer, Roche-Chugai, and UCB, and research grants from MSD, Pfizer, Roche-Chugai and UCB. PLEASE REPORT SIMILAR COMPETING INTEREST AT THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.