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Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are significantly more likely to develop asthma than healthy people across all sex and age sub-groups, Taiwan researchers report.

The researchers matched each of the 27,602 RA patients with three controls without RA. Overall, asthma was 2.07 times commoner in people with RA than controls (4.56 and 2.22 per 1,000 person years respectively). The risk of asthma associated with RA was higher in:

• Females (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 2.18) than males (HR 1.72)
• Those without (HR 2.17) rather than with co-morbidity (HR 1.53)
• People younger than 40 years of age (HR 3.26) rather than those 40-59 years (HR 2.42) and 60-plus (HR 1.81).

However the report suggested that the incidence of asthma increased with age in patients and controls, possibly because older people have more co-morbid diseases that might be risk factors for late-onset asthma. (Q J Med)