Table 6.
Demographics, medication, and comorbidities of the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients at the start of their first biologic or targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (b/tsDMARD) treatment.
| Normal Weight | Overweight | Obese | Underweight | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (n = 1505) | (n = 1024) | p | (n = 546) | p | (n = 142) | p | |
| Women | 1237 (82.19) | 664 (64.84) | <0.001 | 416 (76.19) | 0.003 | 133 (93.66) | 0.001 |
| Age, years (mean (SD)) | 53.86 (14.60) | 57.63 (12.28) | <0.001 | 57.04 (11.65) | <0.001 | 49.37 (16.47) | 0.001 |
| RA duration, years (median [IQR]) |
4.82(1.67, 12.32) | 4.08(1.35, 10.75) | 0.005 | 3.73(1.38, 8.77) | 0.001 | 6.94(2.16, 14.47) | 0.115 |
| Missing | 34 (2.26) | 33 (3.22) | 19 (3.48) | 8 (5.63) | |||
| First b/tsDMARD | 0.192 | 0.095 | 0.785 | ||||
| Anti-TNF biologic | 1317 (87.51) | 871 (85.06) | 459 (84.07) | 127 (89.44) | |||
| Other biologic | 146 (9.7) | 116 (11.33) | 71 (13.00) | 12 (8.45) | |||
| tsDMARD | 42 (2.79) | 37 (3.61) | 16 (2.93) | 3 (2.11) | |||
| csDMARD on index date | 1000 (66.45) | 704 (68.75) | 0.242 | 394 (72.16) | 0.016 | 92 (64.79) | 0.759 |
| Glucocorticoids on index date | 604 (40.13) | 427 (41.7) | 0.456 | 222 (40.66) | 0.870 | 49 (34.51) | 0.222 |
| Other rheumatological disease | 308 (20.47) | 268 (26.17) | 0.001 | 156 (28.57) | <0.001 | 22 (15.49) | 0.192 |
| Fractures, surgeries | 151 (10.03) | 80 (7.81) | 0.067 | 36 (6.59) | 0.021 | 14 (9.86) | 1.000 |
| Skin problems, allergies, drug reactions | 18 (1.2) | 11 (1.07) | 0.927 | 8 (1.47) | 0.796 | 2 (1.41) | 1.000 |
| Infections | 22 (1.46) | 17 (1.66) | 0.816 | 12 (2.2) | 0.338 | 1 (0.7) | 0.718 |
| Cancerous tumor | 27 (1.79) | 26 (2.54) | 0.253 | 12 (2.2) | 0.683 | 1 (0.7) | 0.535 |
| Cardiovascular event/disease | 216 (14.35) | 274 (26.76) | <0.001 | 185 (33.88) | <0.001 | 13 (9.15) | 0.113 |
| Diabetes | 36 (2.39) | 49 (4.79) | 0.002 | 48 (8.79) | <0.001 | 2 (1.41) | 0.650 |
| Other metabolic problems | 36 (2.39) | 55 (5.37) | <0.001 | 33 (6.04) | <0.001 | 0 (0) | 0.118 |
| Depression/anxiety | 58 (3.85) | 58 (5.66) | 0.041 | 41 (7.51) | 0.001 | 5 (3.52) | 1.000 |
Values are the number and column percentages, unless otherwise specified. Significance tests compared the underweight, overweight, and obese categories to the normal weight group using chi-squared test for categorical variables and t-test for continuous variables, except for the Wilcoxon test for the RA duration. For the tests, the missing values did not function as a grouping variable. Abbreviations: n—sample size; SD—standard deviation; IQR—interquartile range; anti-TNF—anti-tumor necrosis factor; tsDMARD—targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug; csDMARD—conventional synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug. Note: csDMARD and glucocorticoids indicate use on the index date, and not as ever having used them before.