Increased incidence of stroke and impaired prognosis after stroke among patients with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis

To examine the incidence of, and outcome after, a stroke in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) compared with the general population. The northern Sweden MONICA register was used to compare the incidence of stroke in a cohort of RA patients with the general population. Forty RA patients who had also suffered a stroke were identified. For each patient with RA, three controls with a history of stroke but without RA were randomly collected from the same register, and matched for age and sex. The standardised incidence ratio (SIR) for stroke was 2.7 in RA patients compared with the general population (p