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I am in the process of undergoing cardio testing. Do I believe it can accelerate… oh heck yes. I never had a leaky valve or thickening of my heart. Now, it is present along with some symptoms my specialist is not liking. This is so important, especially for WOMEN, to follow up with any chest discomfort, exertion, pain between the shoulder blades, seizing of the heart muscle and so on. Be your own advocate!! Be smart and don’t stop until reasoning wins. Tazzy
I love your attitude, and not that it’s positive – it’s proactive, it’s DO SOMETHING, DO WHAT YOU CAN. Absolutely perfect.
You’re also educating a lot of people out here about RA. I had no idea you-all face so many challenges that don’t appear in mass media coverage. Good for you.
Since were speculating on shorter life spans for people with RA and the higher incidence of cardiac comorbidities, I would put forward the following conjecture. In addition to the inflammation, perhaps the cardiac problems are due to lack of physical activity and mobility due to disability. As stated elsewhere on your blog, many RA patients are diabled within 10 to 20 years. It is well known and documented that muscles that aren’t used will atrophy. The same is true for the heart. Perhaps finding ways for people that are disabled to challenge their heart muscle regularily would reduce the mortality gap due to cardiac comorbidites.
Actually, cachexia is the main reason for muscle atrophy with RA. And from what the studies say, neither muscle atrophy nor inflammation is the primary cause of the CVD of RA. There are genetic predispositions for a particular type of CVD that are being studied as shown here.
edit: I’ve been working on a heart disease post for a while. It seems the CVD of RA is not like other CVD for several reasons. So it also does not respond to therapies the same.
Don’t confuse muscle atrophy with cachexia. Cachexia is a very complex syndrome. I was more referring to the loss of muscle due to lack of activity which is typically reverseable through exercise and proper nutrition.
ps. You have to watch those genetic arguments. As someone who has worked their whole life in drug discovery, it is exceptionally rare to non-existent that a single SNP would be responsible for differences in something as complex as CVD and in the subset of patients with RA. At best you might be able to say there is an association, but I would wager that there are a hundred other genes with a similar association. For this particular study I’m not terribly impressed by their odds ratio increase for the polymorphism. While statistically significant, it is just barely over 1. Don’t for a minute believe it might be causative. Nice to know people are researching it though.
I agree about the complexity of association. That’s what I meant to say. It is more complex and a different animal than other CVD.
What kind of drugs are you researching? Are they RA related?
For the past 7 years I’ve been working in oncology drug discovery. I’ve done some work on the TNF/NF Kappa B pathway which is related to the mechanism that some of the biologics for RA use, but I’ve not worked on any specific RA treatments. Interestingly enough, a number of the cytokines associated with RA are also being studied for cancer therapy as inflammation has been implicated in the lierature as being associated with the development of cancer.
I’m so thankful for finding this site. Lately I’ve thought about asking for a referral to a cardiologist just to see what could be going on. After reading these posts, and realizing more and more that I must be proactive, I AM calling today for an appointment. I have a lot to live for, two children still at home who need me. Thanks Kelly, for helping us take better care of ourselves!
Phyllis, I hope you do go see the cardio doc or whatever specialist that you need! Your family will be glad you did. Hopefully the news will be good. :rainbow:
Will you explain further what is meant by “Less adequate preventive care?” Does this mean prior to diagnosis and the fact that too many of us are diagnosed at the later stages of RA and therefore, the treatments fail us on a higher statistical rate?
Thank you for all that you do and all that you are! You bless us well and so often.
Many Blessings in return!
To The Renewal Of Our Lives, One Day At A Time,
Anthony
No, I’m sorry if I confused you. Preventive care in the articles linked to here describes standard health screenings or immunizations used to help identify various serious conditions early enough to treat them. There will more on that in tomorrow’s post. Examples would be cancer screenings or flu shots or regular blood tests to check for signs of heart disease, etc.
The Annals of Rheumatic Diseases article by Dr. Gabriel can’t be seen unless you pay a fee. All you have access to is the abstract and that doesn’t say much.
Kelly, as always, I’m so impressed and grateful that you take so much of your precious time and energy to be a strong voice for all of us.’at 74’in my vintage years, and having struggled w/this dreadful disease for over 16 years, I’ve recently grown to accept the fact that the longevity genes in the women in my family history are running out. So the discussions on mortality rates for RA’ers are very real to me. In fact, I am slowing down so much, turtles and snails are passing me by! The fatigue is so overwhelming I sleep 10-12 hours a day. Imdont use a wheelchair except in airports. I do have a rollator, which is a kind of cute walking device on wheels that has a basket and a seat and folds up. Mine is red and my daughter made a red and black polka dot seat cover for it.
Anyway, I think the work you are doing for patient centered health care and research is marvelous and I admire your courage and integrity. Thank you, Linda C.