Hanberg JS, Hsieh E, Akgün KM, et al. - In this study, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) incidence, presentation as well as management in patients with HIV have been reported.

• Researchers included 56,250 patients with HIV from the Veterans Aging Cohort Study as well as 116,944 uninfected individuals over 2,384,541 person-years.

• A diagnosis of RA was reviewed in 2,748 individuals in this cohort based on ICD-9 or ICD-10 codes; RA was incident in 215 individuals, including 21 patients with HIV.

• For patients with HIV vs uninfected individuals, RA incidence rate ratio was 0.29; indicating a less common incident RA in patients with HIV vs uninfected individuals.

• Compared with RA patients without HIV, those with HIV had lower seropositivity rate and titers of RA-specific autoantibodies, and were prescribed DMARDs less frequently.