Key clinical point: Patients with RA were at lower risk for developing incident type 2 diabetes mellitus in comparison with patients with hypertension, psoriatic arthritis, or osteoarthritis, as well as the general population without RA, over a median follow-up period of about 1.5 years.

Major finding: The hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for risk of diabetes in patients with RA were 0.72 (0.66-0.78) in comparison with the general non-RA cohort, 0.65 (0.60-0.71) in comparison with the hypertension cohort, 0.75 (0.69-0.81) in comparison with the osteoarthritis cohort, and 0.76 (0.67-0.86) in comparison with compared with the psoriatic arthritis cohort.

Study details: A retrospective cohort study of 108,568 matched patients in a large, nationwide, commercial health insurance claims database.

Disclosures: The study was supported by a research grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb. One author reported receiving research grants from Brigham and Women’s Hospital from Pfizer, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Roche for unrelated topics.