RA, erectile dysfunction association seen

Men with rheumatoid arthritis had a two-thirds greater risk of developing erectile dysfunction than men without the disease in the first study to show such an association.

The odds ratio for prior rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in men with erectile dysfunction (ED) was 1.67 that of controls, based on conditional logistic regression analysis, after adjusting for the possible confounding effects of monthly income, geographical location, urbanization level, hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, obesity, and alcohol abuse/ alcohol dependence syndrome.

“This study succeeded in making a novel association between ED and prior RA. It is important for physicians treating RA patients to be sensitive to any complaints concerning sexual function, says writer at Taipei (Taiwan) Medical University.

The study included 6,310 patients (aged 18-80 years) who had received a first time diagnosis of ED between 2001 and 2009 as cases and 37,860 control patients (six controls per case) matched by age and index year. The researchers used data from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000, which includes all the claims data and registration files of 1 million individuals.

The researchers included only ED patients who had been diagnosed at least twice between 2001 and 2009 to increase the diagnositic validity of ED.