Public healthcare attendance associates with enhanced conventional and non-conventional atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk burdens in established rheumatoid arthritis

To assess whether public healthcare attendance associates with altered atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk in established rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We determined disparities in major conventional (hypertension, dyslipidemia, smoking and diabetes), other conventional (underweight, obesity, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, alcohol use, tension, depression and body height) and non-conventional (current and cumulative inflammation markers) cardiovascular risk factors between 424 consecutive public and 202 private healthcare patients in mixed regression models. Eighty-one percent of public healthcare patients were black (67%) or caucasian (14%) and 83% of private healthcare cases were caucasian. Seventy percent of the patients had > or = 1 major conventional risk factor. After adjustment for age, gender, ethnic origin and statin use when appropriate, public healthcare attendance associated with the prevalence of hypertension (odds ratio (OR) [95%CI]=1.72 [1.03, 2.85]), having > or = 1 major conventional risk factor (OR [95%CI]=1.83 [1.09, 3.07]) and an increased mean (SD) number of such risk factors (p=0.03), metabolic syndrome frequency (OR [95%CI]=1.90 [1.07, 3.40]), alcohol use (OR [95%CI]=0.07 [0.03, 0.18]), shorter stature (p