Rheumatic Disease Awareness Month: Focus on RA and Diet

The Mediterranean diet may reduce the risk of rheumatoid arthritis in seropositive men.

Reference1. Johansson K, Askling J, Alfredsson L, Di Giuseppe D; EIRA study group. Mediterranean diet and risk of rheumatoid arthritis: a population-based case-control study. Arthritis Res Ther. 2018;20:175. doi: 10.1186/s13075-018-1680-2.

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Johansson and colleagues in Sweden have discovered an inverse relationship between the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and eating a Mediterranean-based diet-but only for seropositive men.1 Scroll through the slides for the details of the study and the take-home points for physicians.

(Image: ©EcoPimStudio/Shutterstock.com)

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RA, rheumatoid arthritis.

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BMI, body mass index; RA, rheumatoid arthritis.

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Note that there was a tendency toward lower risk of rheumatoid arthritis in smokers who carried the HLA-DRB1 shared epitope allele and who had a high Mediterranean diet score.

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RA, rheumatoid arthritis.

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