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According to a new study out of Sweeden, there is an alarming link between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and the risk of experiencing a heart attack.

Marie Gunnarsson, a graduate student at the Karolinska Instituet in Stockholm, followed patients that were newly diagnosed with RA, and compared them with people without it. For ten years, she collected data on heart attacks, heart related deaths and deaths from other causes. What she found was that before their diagnosis, RA patients did not have a higher risk of heart attack, but after their diagnosis, the heart attack risk rates rose steadily. What’s more, is that over the ten year period, the RA patients suffered nearly twice as many heart attacks and heart attack deaths as the non-patients.

Read on to learn more about the relationship between RA and heart attack risk.

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