Gender Difference In Severity Of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Main Category: Arthritis / Rheumatology
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology;  Pain / Anesthetics;  Depression
Article Date: 14 Jan 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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Women appear to suffer more from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) than men. This is revealed in research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research and Therapy.

Tuulikki Sokka from the Jyvaskyla Central Hospital, Finland, along with other members of the Quantitative Standard Monitoring of Patients with RA (QUEST-RA) program, explored possible associations between gender and disease activity measures, treatments, and clinical characteristics in more than 6,000 RA patients from 70 sites in 25 countries. She said, "The possible influence of gender and gender-related variables on the symptoms, severity, and prognosis of rheumatoid arthritis has been of considerable interest for some time. Generally, women report more severe symptoms, greater disability, and often have higher work disability rates than men."

The demographic characteristics of the group the authors studied were typical of an RA cohort; 79% were female, more than 90% were Caucasians and the mean age was 57 years. The patients were evaluated by a doctor and completed a self-report about their own condition. Women had higher scores (indicating poorer status) than men in all of the key measures, the gender gap being widest in the self-reported measures. According to Sokka, "Obvious differences between genders exist in the prevalence, age at onset, and level of production of harmful arthritis autoantibodies. Furthermore, women report more symptoms and poor scores on most questionnaires, including scores for pain, depression, and other health-related items".

However, the authors do speculate that most of gender differences may originate from the measures of disease activity rather than from the RA disease activity itself. Sokka said, "Women have less strength than men, which has as much of a major effect in the functional status of patients with RA as it does in the healthy population. In fact, the gender differences in musculoskeletal performance remain even among the fittest individuals - female and male athletes still compete separately. Given that woman is the "weaker vessel" concerning musculoskeletal size and strength and her baseline values are lower than men's, the same burden of a musculoskeletal disease may appear to be more harmful to a woman than to a man."

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Notes:

1. Women, men, and rheumatoid arthritis: analyses of disease activity, disease characteristics, and treatments in the QUEST-RA Study

Tuulikki Sokka, Sergio Toloza, Maurizio Cutolo, Hannu Kautiainen, Heidi Makinen, Feride Gogus, Vlado Skakic, Humeira Badsha, Tonu Peets, Asta Baranauskaite, Pál Géher, Ilona Újfalussy, Fotini N Skopouli, Maria Mavrommati, Rieke Alten, Christof Pohl, Jean Sibilia, Andrea Stancati, Fausto Salaffi, Wojciech Romanowski, Danuta Zarowny-Wierzbinska, Dan Henrohn, Barry Bresnihan, Patricia Minnock, Lene Surland Knudsen, Johannes WG Jacobs, Jaime Calvo-Alen, Juris Lazovskis, Geraldo da Rocha Castelar Pinheiro, Dmitry Karateev, Daina Andersone, Sylejman Rexhepi, Yusuf Yazici, Theodore Pincus and the QUEST-RA Group Arthritis Research & Therapy

Article available at journal website: http://arthritis-research.com/
All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.

2. Arthritis Research and Therapy is an international, peer-reviewed online and print journal, publishing original research, reviews, commentaries and reports. Studies relate to the rationale and treatment of arthritis, autoimmune disease and diseases of bone and cartilage. The journal is edited by Prof Peter E Lipsky (USA) and Prof Sir Ravinder N Maini (UK) and has an Impact Factor of 4.04.

3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector.

Source: Graeme Baldwin
BioMed Central