Lifestyle Choices May Reduce Risk of RA

Women who made healthier choices among 5 modifiable factors affecting health reduced their risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to recent research.

Investigators gathered medical and lifestyle information collected for the Nurses' Health Study during 1986-2016, and NHSII during 1991-2017. They used a Healthy Lifestyle Index Score (HLIS), which includes 5 modifiable components—smoking, physical activity, diet, body mass index, and alcohol consumption—and confirmed the participants’ status in regard to RA and to seropositive and seronegative subtypes.

“Cox regression, adjusted for confounders, modeled associations between HLIS and incident RA,” the authors wrote. “The population attributable risk (PAR) estimated the proportion of incident RA preventable if participants adopted ≥4 healthy lifestyle factors.”

The analysis identified 1,219 incident cases of RA (776 seropositive, 443 seronegative) that developed through 4,467,751 person-years. Higher scores on the HLIS were associated with lower overall risk of RA (hazard ratio [HR] 0.86, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.82-0.90) and with lower seropositive (HR 0.85, 95% CI 0.80-0.91), and seronegative RA risk (HR 0.87, 95% 0.80-0.94).

“Women with 5 healthy lifestyle factors had lowest risk (HR 0.42, 95% CI 0.22-0.80). The PAR for adhering to ≥ 4 lifestyle factors was 34% for RA,” the investigators found. “In this prospective cohort, healthier lifestyle was associated with lower RA risk. A substantial proportion of RA may be preventable by healthy lifestyle.”

—Rebecca Mashaw

Reference:
Hahn J, Malspeis S, Choi MY et al. Association of healthy lifestyle behaviors and the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis among women. Arthritis Care Res. Published online January 18, 2022. doi.org/10.1002/acr.24862