Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học General Psychiatry cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: Role of carotid ultrasonography in the evaluation of cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. | Gonzalez-Gay et al. Arthritis Research Therapy 2010 12 409 http content 12 6 409 LETTER Role of carotid ultrasonography in the evaluation of cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis Miguel A Gonzalez-Gay41 Carlos Gonzalez-Juanatey2 Jose A Miranda-Filloy3 Javier Martin4 and Javier Llorca 45 6 See related research by Sõdergren etal. http content 12 4 R158 We read with great interest the article by Sodergren and colleagues in a recent issue of Arthritis Research Therapy Atherosclerosis in early rheumatoid arthritis very early endothelial activation and rapid progression of intima media thickness 1 . In the study reported in the article the authors showed no differences of carotid artery intima-media thickness IMT in patients with very early rheumatoid arthritis RA compared with controls at baseline 1 . However in the subgroup of individuals who were re-evaluated 18 months after the first ultrasound measurement the carotid IMT had increased significantly among the patients with RA. However this was not the case for the controls 1 . With respect to these interesting observations we would like to further emphasize the importance of carotid ultrasonography in the evaluation of the cardiovascular risk of patients with RA and the importance of the duration of the disease as a predictor of severity so it can influence the development of cardiovascular events in these patients. We previously reported that in longstanding RA patients with no classic cardiovascular risk factors at the time of the carotid assessment the duration of the disease was the best predictor of carotid plaques 2 . On the other hand RA is a chronic inflammatory disease and even in the apparently quiescent phases of the disease the cumulative effect of the chronic inflammatory burden may account for the progression of the atherosclerosis disease. In this regard we observed that the mean values of C-reactive protein CRP over an extended .
