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Prevalence of comorbidities and risk factors in spondyloarthritis: results of a cross-sectional study

Spondyloarthritis (SpA) includes axial and peripheral SpA, according to the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society classification criteria.1 2 An increasing number of research has focused on the comorbidities and risk factors in SpA. The first and latest international cross-sectional ASAS-COMOSPA study, published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases , has proposed some comorbidities such as cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, cancers, infections and gastrointestinal diseases. This research has also proposed the risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, cancers and osteoporosis.3 Other studies have also focused on the cardiovascular diseases among patients with SpA.4–6 However, as for heart comorbidities, valvular heart disease was not mentioned in the ASAS-COMOSPA study, while it has been reported to be associated with SpA in a number of recent studies, based both on epidemiology and pathology.7–9 As for risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, hyperuricaemia was not included as well, while uric acid has also been proven to be related to cardiovascular disease in the recent years.10–13 Since there are still some comorbidities and risk factors to be evaluated, we proposed a research to include valvular heart disease as a comorbidity of SpA and hyperuricaemia as a risk factor of cardiovascular disease among patients with SpA.

From 2016 to 2018, we conducted a cross-sectional study of 202 SpA diagnosed by rheumatologists in the Chinese Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital. We extracted data from the hospital’s information systems by searching medical files at the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, the Department of Ophthalmology, and the Department of Gastroenterology. All the medical files were examined to see if the diagnosis of axial or peripheral SpA could be confirmed.

Once the diagnosis of axial and peripheral SpA was confirmed, the following categories of data were collected: demographics and disease characteristics, extra-articular manifestations, comorbidities, risk factors for comorbidities, and …