Infection risk in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Spondyloarthropathy patients under treatment with DMARDs, Corticosteroids and TNF-α antagonists

Table 1 Demographic and clinical characteristics of patients and crude infection rates/100 patient-years according to the type of treatment

	DMARDs	DMARDs + CS	Anti-TNFα	Anti-TNFα + CS	Anti-TNFα + DMARDs	Anti-TNFα + DMARDs + CS	All patients
Patients N	30	82	24	42	42	121	341
Gender
Male	8	15	12	13	11	34	93
Female	22	67	12	29	31	87	248
Age
<50	9	15	12	17	14	38	105
50-59	9	22	3	7	8	29	78
60-69	5	22	6	4	13	34	84
≥70	7	23	3	14	7	20	74
Type of disease
RA	9	64	8	29	23	90	223
SpA	21	18	16	13	19	31	118
Disease duration
<5 years	21	41	7	6	14	28	117
5-9 years	2	29	3	18	11	43	106
≥10	7	12	14	18	17	50	118
Vaccination for influenza
Yes	5	24	4	18	17	57	125
No	25	58	20	24	25	64	216
Comorbidities and smoking
Yes	13	24	17	16	21	55	146
No	17	58	7	26	21	66	195
All infections N	7	29	16	70	43	166	331
Serious infections N	0	0	1	2	2	8	13
Patient-years	49.2	233.5	52.7	111.6	103.9	360.9	911.8
Infections /100	14.2	12.4	30.4	62.7	41.4	46.0	36.3
Patient-years	14.2	12.4	30.4	62.7	41.4	46.0	36.3
p value	Reference group	0.721	0.09	0.00001	0.0039	0.0003	-

CS: Corticosteroids; DMARDs: Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs; TNF: Tumour Necrosis Factor.

ISSN: 1479-5876