The recent study conducted on rheumatoid arthritis says that after a span of 40 years of decline, it appears to be on the rise among women. The research conducted by Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota comes out with vital proofs for this claim.
Dr. Sherine Gabriel says that if these results are true, it may provide clues as to the environmental triggers that may contribute to the development of RA.
Dr. Gabriel has presented research work done by her and colleagues this week in the Annual Scientific Meeting held at the American College of Rheumatology, San Francisco. 

R. Gabriel says that the data is based on a unique data resource, the Rochester Epidemiology Project that has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for approximately four decades. “It contains essentially complete medical information on all residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, from the time they were born or the date they moved to Olmsted County, until the time they die or the date they move away,” says Gabriel.
The research result shows that between 1995 and 2005, 350 patients, nearly 70 percent of who were women, were diagnosed with RA. The age-adjusted incidence in females was 54.0 per 100,000 population, which shows a significant increase over the incidence of 36.4 per 100,000 than the previous decade.

Dr. Gabriel notes that there is a rapid change in incidence, which is suggestive of an environmental factor or factors.
The researchers are now focusing on the disease severity to determine if the increasing incidence is a reflection of an added number of mild or of severe cases.

Dr. Gabriel also added that they are in efforts to examine risk factors in order to generate hypotheses about what might be behind this observed change in incidence.
She also emphasized that these results are just preliminary and there is a need of much more work before the impact is fully understood.

Bookmark It

 Del.icio.us    digg  
 Facebook    Google Bookmarks    Stumble It    Technorati    Yahoo! My Web  
Hide Sites Tags: research., Men, study, San Francisco, rheumatoid arthritis, women, Dr. Sherine Gabriel, American College of Rheumatology, population