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Etanercept normalises left ventricular mass in patients with rheumatoid arthritis
Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, 08/21/2012
Clinical Article
Daien CI et al. – Etanercept (ETN) induced a significant decrease in left ventricular mass index with medium–term treatment with no change in blood pressure or pulse wave velocity. Tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) may be an important factor of LV hypertrophy, which may explain the benefit of TNF inhibitors on cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in rheumatoid arthritis. These results need to be confirmed by larger studies and with other TNF inhibitors.
Methods- Consecutive female patients with active RA requiring treatment with ETN (n=28) or sDMARDs (n=20) were included.
- Clinical and biological monitoring, echocardiography and pulse wave velocity (PWV) assessment were performed at inclusion and at 3 and 6 months after the start of treatment.
- Paired t tests and multivariate linear regression analysis were used.
- Mean LVMI tended to be higher at baseline in the ETN group than in the sDMARD group (96.5±19.8 vs 84.3±26.8 g/m2; p=0.11 for the ETN and sDMARD groups, respectively).
- In patients with ETN treatment, mean LVMI was significantly decreased at 3 and 6 months (–6.3±7.6 and –14.2±9.3 g/m2; p<0.001), with no change from baseline for patients with sDMARD treatment (–2.2±10.9 and –2.7±10.2 g/m2, respectively).
- Blood pressure (BP) and aortic PWV were not changed by either treatment.