Increased cardiovascular risk is a hallmark of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other autoimmune rheumatic diseases, but quantifying the risk has proved challenging insofar as standard instruments appear less accurate in this population.Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is a measure of arterial stiffness and is associated with cardiovascular event risk in the general population, though not well studied in rheumatic disease patients.In this modestly powered study involving patients with RA, systemic sclerosis, and spondyloarthritis, cfPWV was a better predictor of future cardiovascular events than the widely used SCORE2 system.
Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) measurements more accurately predicted cardiovascular (CV) events in patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases than a commonly used CV risk scoring system, researchers said.
Among 143 patients followed for a median of 7 years -- incurring a total of 20 CV events -- high cfPWV values yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.84 (95% CI 0.73-0.93) versus 0.56 (95% CI 0.41-0.72) for the updated Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE2), according to Konstantinos Triantafyllias, MD, PhD, of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and colleagues. That value for SCORE2 is barely better than a coin flip (AUC=0.5).
