Rheumatoid arthritis and metabolic disorders.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease associated with multiple metabolic alterations and increased cardiovascular risk. It is supposed that visceral obesity seems to be a connection between rheumatoid arthritis and cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is not only associated with increased disease activity and worsened quality of life in this group of patients, but also determines the effectiveness of treatment. Biological therapy interferes with metabolic changes, too. Therefore, there is a tendency to select the right anticytokine preparation in the first line of treatment to reduce not only disease activity but also affect aspects of metabolic syndrome and comorbidites, thereby reducing cardiovascular risk and patients mortality. This work offers a basic overview of the associations between rheumatoid arthritis and metabolic disorders, describes the impact of biological therapy on individual components of the metabolic syndrome.

Hypereosinophilic syndrome-a rare adverse event of anti-cytokine treatment in rheumatoid arthritis resolved after Janus kinase inhibitor therapy.

Eosinophilia is uncommon in early rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The most frequent causes of hypereosinophilia during RA treatment are atopic eczema, allergy, helminth infection, haematological malignancy and drug-associated complications. The pathogenesis of this abnormality associated with anti-cytokine therapy is still unknown. We report the case of a young woman with RA and eosinophilia accompanied by systemic symptoms such as dyspnoea, fluid retention and eosinophilic vasculitis. An interesting observation was the persistence of eosinophilia during treatment with various biologics and its normalization after switching to the Janus kinase inhibitor baricitinib.