Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are almost twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease (CVD) as those without. However, traditional CVD risks have been shown to underperform in RA patients; thus, we aimed to identify new surrogate risk factors to better reflect their atherosclerotic burden.
A total of 380 RA patients with carotid atherosclerosis data were analyzed in this prospective cohort study. The primary outcome was carotid plaque progression over the 3-year follow-up period. Risk parameters assessed for the progression of carotid plaque were categorized as demographics, traditional CVD risks, RA-related risks, and bone parameters.
The progression of carotid plaque was associated with the level of rheumatoid factor (p = 0.025), serum C-terminal telopeptide of type-I collagen (CTX-I) (p = 0.014), and femur and distal radius bone mass density (BMD) (p = 0.007 and 0.004, respectively), as well as traditional CVD risk factors. In multivariable analyses, the bone parameters of serum CTX-I and distal radius BMD proved to be independent predictors of the progression of carotid plaque along with hyperlipidemia, smoking, and baseline carotid plaque (all, p < 0.05). Adding both serum CTX-I and distal radius BMD increased the carotid plaque progression prediction model's percentage of explained variance from 24 to 30%.
High serum CTX-I and lower radius BMD, reflecting high bone turnover, were independent risk factors for the progression of carotid plaque in RA patients, implicating the direct or indirect role of bone metabolism on the atherosclerotic burden.