Rheumatoid arthritis and cognition dysfunction: lack of association with cumulative glucocorticoid use

Abstract

Aim: To study if cumulative glucocorticoid use could be related to cognitive impairment in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients.

Methods: A sample of 60 RA patients and 64 controls were studied for the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and depression scale (using CES-D or Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale). RA patients also filled a visual analogic scale (VAS) of pain and had disease activity evaluated by DAS-28 ESR (disease activity score using erythrocyte sedimentation rate). Clinical and treatment data, including cumulative dose of glucocorticoid, were collected from the charts.

Results: Patients with RA had more cognitive impairment and depression than controls (p = .002 and .03, respectively). A weak and negative association of MMSE with VAS of pain was found (rho= −0.16; 95%CI = 0.49–0.004; p = .04) but not with depression and cumulative glucocorticoid doses (p = .22 and p = .52, respectively).

Conclusion: Although RA patients have more cognitive impairment than controls, no correlation of this problem with cumulative glucocorticoid doses was found.

Keywords:

• Rheumatoid arthritis
• cognition
• glucocorticoid

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.