Comorbidities fewer prior to onset of giant cell arteritis

Patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA) have a lower prevalence of diabetes mellitus as well as median fasting blood glucose (FBG) and body mass index (BMI) up to 5 years prior to diagnosis, according to a study, indicating the influence of metabolic factors on the risk of GCA.

A retrospective case control study was conducted on patients with incident GCA between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2019 in Olmsted County, Minnesota, US. The research team identified two age- and sex-matched controls, each assigned an index data that corresponded to an incidence date of GCA.

In addition, they manually abstracted medical records for comorbidities and laboratory data at incidence date, 5 years, and 10 years prior to diagnosis. Using the International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision, the researchers analysed 25 chronic conditions at incidence date and 5 years prior.

Overall, 129 patients with GCA (74 percent female) and 253 controls were included in the study. At incidence date, patients with GCA showed a lower prevalence of diabetes mellitus than controls (5 percent vs 17 percent; p=0.001).

At 5 years prior to incidence date, patients with GCA had a lower likelihood of developing diabetes (2 percent vs 13 percent; p<0.001) and hypertension (27 percent vs 45 percent; p=0.002), as well as a lower mean number of comorbidities (0.7 vs 1.3; p<0.001) than control participants. In addition, GCA patients had markedly lower median FBG (96 vs 104 mg/dL; p<0.001) and BMI (25.8 vs 27.7 kg/m²; p=0.02).

Finally, GCA showed a negative association with FBG at 5 and 10 years prior to diagnosis in multivariable logistic regression analysis.