ReviewCardiovascular risk induced by low-dose corticosteroids in rheumatoid arthritis: A systematic literature review
Section snippets
Literature search
A systematic literature search was performed using databases of Medline, Embase and Cochrane Library. The keywords used for the Medline search were: (“Arthritis, Rheumatoid/epidemiology”[Mesh:NoExp] or “Arthritis, Rheumatoid/ultrasonography” [Mesh:NoExp] or “Arthritis, Rheumatoid/complications” [Mesh:NoExp] or “Arthritis, Rheumatoid/drug therapy”[Mesh:NoExp] or “Arthritis, Rheumatoid/mortality”[Mesh:NoExp]) and (“Cardiovascular Diseases”[Mesh:NoExp] or “Heart Diseases”[Mesh:NoExp] or
Results
The literature search on electronic databases identified 1138 titles (Fig. 1) and 277 articles were selected after reviewing the titles and abstracts. Finally, 34 studies were included in the analysis and three abstracts from international congresses were added.
Discussion
This systematic literature review showed a poor association between LD-CT and CV risk factors and identified a trend of increasing major CV events. LDC exposure might have a beneficial effect on lipid profile, no effect on blood pressure and an increase in insulin resistance. The analysis of surrogate markers revealed no risk of atherosclerosis with LD-CT and no effect on cardiac function. The effect of LD-CT on arterial stiffness is not clear since two studies did not find any change [39], [40]
Conflict of interest statement
The authors received a grant support from Abbott.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Abbott for an institutional support for this study, Philippe Gaudin, Daniel Wendling, Alain Cantagrel, Pascal Claudepierre, Jean-Francis Maillefert, Thierry Schaeverbeke and Jacques Tebib for their help in elaborating the study and interpretation of the data.
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