Use of methotrexate therapy is not associated with decreased prevalence of metabolic syndrome - authors response 英文参考文献.docVIP

Available online /content/11/5/414 Letter Use of methotrexate therapy is not associated with decreased prevalence of metabolic syndrome – authors’ response Tracey E Toms1,2, Vasileios F Panoulas1, Holly John1, Karen MJ Douglas1 and George D Kitas1,2 1Department of Rheumatology, Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust, Russells Hall Hospital, Pensnett Road, Dudley, West Midlands, DY1 2HQ, UK 2ARC Epidemiology Unit, Manchester University, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PT, UK Corresponding author: George D Kitas, gd.kitas@dgoh.nhs.uk Published: 21 September 2009 Arthritis Research Therapy 2009, 11:414 (doi:10.1186/ar2806) This article is online at /content/11/5/414 ? 2009 BioMed Central Ltd See related research by Toms et al., /content/11/4/R110, and related letter by Raterman et al., /content/11/5/413 We thank Raterman and colleagues for their interest in our article ‘Methotrexate therapy associates with a reduced prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in rheumatoid arthritis patients over the age of 60: more than just an anti-inflam- matory effect? A cross-sectional study’ [1]. Raterman and colleagues replicated our analyses in their cohort of 353 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients from Holland but were unable to demonstrate or confirm an association between methotrexate (MTX) use and the metabolic syndrome (MetS) defined by the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) 2004 and NCEP 2001 criteria. In an attempt to address this discrepancy, they have raised several interesting questions. The first is whether this association was present only in RA patients treated with MTX monotherapy or also in the subgroup treated with MTX as part of combination therapy. The results presented in our original paper were based on analysing all patients receiving MTX (n = 214), irrespectively of whether this was monotherapy or combina-