Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Jul 26, 2017; 9(7): 562-573
Published online Jul 26, 2017. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v9.i7.562
Sudden cardiac death in patients with rheumatoid arthritis
Sherry Masoud, Phang Boon Lim, George D Kitas, Vasileios Panoulas
Sherry Masoud, Phang Boon Lim, Cardiology Department, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Hammersmith Hospital, London W1 20HS, United Kingdom
George D Kitas, Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, United Kingdom
Vasileios Panoulas, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
Vasileios Panoulas, Department of Cardiology, Royal Brompton and Harefield, NHS Foundation Trust Harefield Hospital, Greater, London UB9 6JH, United Kingdom
Author contributions: All authors contributed to the conception, drafting and reviewing of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflict of interest
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Vasileios Panoulas, MD, MRCP, PhD, FESC, Department of Cardiology, Royal Brompton and Harefield, NHS Foundation Trust Harefield Hospital, Hill End Road, Harefield, Greater, London UB9 6JH, United Kingdom. v.panoulas@imperial.ac.uk
Telephone: +44-1895-823737-5200 Fax: +44-1895-828892
Received: December 25, 2016
Peer-review started: December 28, 2016
First decision: February 17, 2017
Revised: March 15, 2017
Accepted: April 18, 2017
Article in press: April 19, 2017
Published online: July 26, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death (SCD). This excess risk can only partially be explained by the higher rates of heart failure and ischaemic heart disease. Abnormalities of the autonomic nervous system, such as decreased heart rate variability, and abnormalities of ventricular repolarization parameters, such as QTc interval and QT dispersion, have also been implicated. In this article we review the interplay between these parameters and inflammation, exploring whether biologic agents and disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs may have a role in reducing the burden of SCD.