Evaluation of the correlation between arterial stiffness and capillaroscopic findings in patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis

Arterial stiffness in patients with rheumatoid arthritis occurs due to endothelial damage and has an important predictive value in determining cardiovascular risk. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) and augmentation index (Alx), which are arterial stiffness parameters, were found to be high in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Nailfold findings examined in capillaroscopy are nonspecific, and the incidence of tortuosity, prominent subpapillary plexus, filiform elongated capillaries and neoangiogenesis is increased in rheumatoid arthritis. In our study, we tried to determine the predictive value of these parameters in terms of cardiovascular risk by examining the correlation between capillaroscopy findings and arterial stiffness, which are more common in rheumatoid arthritis. We found regular capillary ectasia (dilatation), tortuosity, prominent subpapillary plexus, filiform elongated capillaries and increased incidence of neoangiogenesis in rheumatoid arthritis (Respectively p=0.001, p<0.001, p=0.004, p<0.001, p=0.001). We found that arterial stiffness parameters such as pulse wave velocity, augmentation index, reflectance amplitude and environmental resistance were significantly increased in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (respectively p< 0.001, p=0.048, p=0.014, p=0.011). However, we could not detect a significant relationship between these capillaroscopic parameters and arterial stiffness parameters in cross-matching. Although the meandering capillaries were higher in the rheumatoid arthritis group but it was not statistically significant (p=0.052). However, the augmentation index was found to be significantly higher in patients with meandering capillaries (p=0.011). Pulse wave velocity and pulse pressure were found to be statistically significantly higher in the rheumatoid arthritis patient group with microhemorrhage (respectively p=0.048, p=0.004). We suggest that more comprehensive studies be conducted to elucidate the predictive values of capillary microhemorrhage and meandering capillaries in terms of cardiovascular risk.