CreakyJoints reports on research updates presented at the annual American College of Rheumatology (ACR) meeting that people living with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) should know about, including a study conducted by researchers at HSS and others showing advanced therapies for RA are linked with decreased dementia.

After looking at Medicare claims data on 141,326 people with RA, which medications they took to treat it, and subsequent incidences of dementia over time, the researchers found that people who took biologics or targeted disease-modifying drugs had a 17 percent lower risk for dementia than people taking conventional disease-modifying drugs.

Dementia risk was comparable, however, between people on different kinds of biologics and targeted therapies, which suggests that “decreased risk is possibly explained by the overall decrease in inflammation rather than a specific mechanism of action,” concluded the researchers.

Read the full article at Creakyjoints.org.