الفهرس 
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Abstract
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic inflammatory disease leading to disturbances of metabolism including the lipid profile.
Blood lipids may be important disease markers in patients with rheumatic disorders which favor the development of atherogenesis as do the Antiphospholipid antibodies.
Atherosclerosis is now considered as an inflammatory disease as it is a result of inflammation and inflammatory cytokines are prevalent in atherosclerotic plaques.
Increase in mortality in RA is predominantly due to accelerated coronary artery and cerebrovascular atherosclerosis, as well as to other cardiovascular (CV) complications including heart failure. Indeed, cardiovascular disease (CVD)-associated mortality risk is increased in both men and women with seropositive RA.
CVD does not only impact mortality in RA, but also leads to significant morbidity. CV events occur approximately a decade earlier in RA than in controls and RA patients are twice as likely to suffer a myocardial infarction with the increased relative risk for CV events being concentrated in younger RA patients and individuals without known prior CV events.
The aim of this work was to determine frequency of dyslipedmia and cardiovascular co morbidities in patients with Rheumatoid arthritis.
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This study evaluated 30 patients with RA, not more than 65 years old, in equal female male ratio, another group of 20 patients with IHD of similar age & similar distribution of sex, but, not Rheumatoid disease, Third group of 20 apparently healthy individuals of similar age & similar distribution of sex as control group. In patients with RA, disease activity measured using the Disease Activity Score in 28 joints (DAS28). High disease activity was considered as DAS28 > 5.1, moderate as DAS28 3.2–5.1, and low disease activity in the range 2.6–3.2.
Plasma levels of total serum cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL) were comparatively measured in all subjects. In addition, ECG, ECHO, chest X- ray, complete medical history taking, physical and clinical examinations were done.
It was found that dyslipidemia and cardiovascular co morbidities are frequent among the patients with RA. There was highly statistically significant difference among the three groups (P-value <0.001) as regard to ESR, CRP, lipid profile, ECG and ECHO changes. But there was no statistically significant difference among the three groups as regard to age, sex and BMI.