VIDEO: Depression in patients with RA linked to increased mortality risk

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And speaking in terms of comorbidities and depression. So there was an abstract that was presented that was very much an eye opener. And this is the abstract that says that depression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis can increase mortality risk six times. I mean, it's huge. It's something that we don't really screen for and we really should. We talk about do patients have side effects to medications? How are they feeling? How are their joints? But we really don't ask whether or not they're depressed. And in this study what they did was, this is a huge registry, the DANBIO Study, and the registry, they looked at patients who've had an ICD-10 code of depression. So this isn't just like, "Oh, I feel sad." This is actually the code for depression. And they looked at patients who were started on antidepressants. And they found that these patients generally had a higher risk of mortality. So I think that's something to really pay attention to in our patients. And then there's one more thing that I do wanna mention with regards to the EULAR meeting that's, you know, really a hot topic right now is the Treat Earlier trial. So we are always looking to see whether or not we can prevent rheumatoid arthritis, but how do we identify that population? Is it patients who had joint pains, or patients who have joint pains and family history? Is it joint pain, family history, and an abnormal MRI? And can we do something about it? So in the Treat Earlier trial, what they did was they enrolled patients who had two weeks of joint symptoms and who had a risk factor. So it could be that they have a positive antibody test, they could have family history and MRI evidence of synovitis. And what they did was they randomized these patients to methotrexate or placebo for a year. And they followed them for a total of two years. And they found that the patients who develop rheumatoid arthritis, they are gonna develop rheumatoid arthritis regardless of whether or not they take methotrexate. But, the people who developed rheumatoid arthritis on methotrexate, they actually had lower disease burden long term. So they had in that follow up second year less pain, less stiffness, and less comorbidities, and less requirement for stronger meds. So that's something to consider. It always, you know, is can we identify these patients, treat them sooner? There is a window of opportunity. So those are pretty much the latest developments with regards to rheumatoid arthritis that was presented at EULAR 2022 that I just recently attended.