Grant: Operating Grant

Due to persistent inflammation, people with arthritis are at risk of developing cardiovascular complications, which are the primary cause of premature death in this population. VTE is a form of cardiovascular condition that causes blood clots in deep veins (deep venous thrombosis) of the legs that sometimes travel to the lungs (pulmonary embolism) and prove life-threatening. Despite this, up to now, research has focused on determining the link between rheumatic disorders and more common types of cardiovascular disease that cause clots in the vessels of the brain (stroke) and the heart (heart attack). To address this important gap, the primary objective of this study is to evaluate the risk of VTE in patients with key rheumatic conditions, defined as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (including lupus, scleroderma, dermato-polymyositis, Sjogren's disease, and systemic vasculitides) for our study purposes. This will be achieved by using a unique health database from British Columbia to identify the number of cases who developed VTE events for the first time after the disease. This number will be compared with the number of new cases from the general population without these diseases. Given the current research, we hypothesize that rheumatic diseases will have an increased risk of VTE. In addition, we will test if some of the anti-rheumatic treatments protect against VTE. Our results have the potential to impact the care, decrease the disease burden and improve survival of patients with arthritis.