Key clinical point: Obese patients with established rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were less likely to achieve remission and more likely to experience intensive exposure to conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (csDMARDs) than patients with normal body mass index (BMI).
Major finding: At 6 months, obese patients vs. those with normal BMI were less likely to achieve disease activity score 28 remission ( odds ratio [OR], 0.44; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.28-0.69 ) and more likely to be treated with combination csDMARD therapy than monotherapy (OR, 1.59; 95% CI, 1.03-2.45).
Study details: The findings are from a real-world analysis of 1,313 patients diagnosed with RA collected from the METEOR database.
Disclosures: No funding was received for this study. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Source: Dey M et al. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2021 Apr 30 . doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keab389 .