This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Many patients with RA experience pain unrelated to inflammation
Many patients with rheumatoid arthritis experience neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia and migraines, and treatment should be multimodal, according to researchers who presented data at the Canadian Rheumatology Association Annual Meeting.
The researchers studied 1,816 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who received at least one medication for pain enrolled in the Ontario Best Practices Research Initiative (OBRI). Mean patient age was 57.6 years, mean disease duration was 8.98 years, and 78.9% of the patients were women.
The largest class of medications reported were NSAIDs (40.8%), followed by opioid analgesics (15.9%) and non-opioid analgesics (15.5%). Antidepressants were used by 14.3% of patients with RA, whereas 8.04% reported using benzodiazapines and 5.57% reported the use of anti-epileptic drugs. The six most common types of pain reported were generalized pain in 28% of patients, joint pain in 12.1%, migraines in 4.8% fibromyalgia in 3.83%, back pain in 3.77% and neuropathic pain in 3.1% of patients.
The researchers concluded that high utilization of pain medications may be linked to other comorbidities such as depression, anxiety and sleep disorder, and that more investigation is necessary to understand the potential associations between pain and comorbidities in patients with RA. – by Shirley Pulawski
Reference:
Kelkar, et al. Paper #36. Presented at: Canadian Rheumatology Association Annual Meeting; Feb. 4–7, 2015; Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.