Possible Link Between Arthritis and Cancer?

Filed in archive Arthritis on March 8, 2007

Wikipedia describes rheumatoid arthritis this way:

It is a disabling and painful inflammatory condition, which can lead to substantial loss of mobility due to pain and joint destruction.

Daily living is greatly impaired. The only method of treatment is the use of drugs. and some of these may do as much harm as they do good. Now researchers in the United Kingdom have found yet another problem related to crippling rheumatoid arthritis. Medical News Today explains:

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease, have a high risk of death from disease - at least double the risk of the general population, studies overwhelmingly show.

The first study to investigate whether patients with RA who develop cancer have a decreased rate of survival, featured in the March 2007 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, also examined the impact of rheumatic disease on overall cancer incidence. Conducted by a team of researchers in the United Kingdom, it focused on 2,105 patients with recent onset inflammatory polyarthritis (IP). Over time, a large proportion of new-onset IP cases evolve into RA, meeting the diagnostic criteria of the American College of Rheumatology.

The Cancer Blog states:

British researchers have found a connection between inflammatory polyarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer. The connection -- a 40 percent increase in cancer mortality in patients with both arthritis conditions.