Results
Among the 113,366 women analyzed, 506 incident RA cases (67.0% with seropositive RA) were identified during 2,428,573 person-years of follow-up. After adjustment for confounders, including smoking, dietary quality and BMI at age 18 years, increasing cumulative average total hours of recreational physical activity was associated with a reduced risk of RA, as follows: HR 1.00 for <1 hour/week (reference), HR 1.00 (95% CI 0.78–1.29) for 1 to <2 hours/week, HR 0.92 (95% CI 0.72–1.17) for 2 to <4 hours/week, HR 0.84 (95% CI 0.63–1.12) for 4 to <7 hours/week, and HR 0.67 (95% CI 0.47–0.98) for ≥7 hours/week (P for trend=0.02). The proportion of the effect between physical activity and RA mediated by updated BMI was 14.0% (P=0.002) for all RA and 20.0% (P=0.001) for seropositive RA.
Conclusion
Higher levels of physical activity were associated with reduced RA risk. These results add to the literature implicating metabolic factors in the pathogenesis of RA.
Refer to the full article for all source material.
Excerpted and adapted from:
Liu X, Tedeschi SK, Lu B, et al. Long-term physical activity and subsequent risk for rheumatoid arthritis among women: A prospective cohort study. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2019 Sep;71(9).
