MONDAY, Oct. 24 (HealthDay News) -- A higher socioeconomic status is associated with a lower risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, according to a Swedish study in the October issue of the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases.
Camilla Bengtsson, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and colleagues studied 930 rheumatoid arthritis cases and 1,126 controls from May 1996 to June 2001. The researchers compared the risk of developing arthritis in people with university degrees and for those with other levels of formal education. They also compared the risk in occupations requiring manual and non-manual duties.
Subjects without a university degree had a 1.4-fold higher arthritis risk than those with university diplomas, and manual employees had about a 20% higher arthritis risk than non-manual employees. Both risks were more pronounced for women, and are not explained by smoking alone, the researchers found.
"The study shows that as yet unexplained environmental or lifestyle factors, or both, influence the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, even in the relatively egalitarian Swedish society," the authors conclude.
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