Clinical Research Directory

Adversity and Its Association With the Development and Expression of Rheumatic Diseases

Epidemiological evidence shows that adverse experiences, particularly, but not exclusively in childhood, are predictors of poor long-term health outcomes and certain social domains. In the field of rheumatic diseases, traumatic events, not only in childhood, have been associated with hospitalization, chronic pain, inflammation, worse outcomes, severity of the disease, and mortality. Some mechanisms proposed to explain the association between the experience of adversity and the development of chronic diseases include an impact on the physiology of immune system cells, gene expression due to DNA modification, and cellular senescence. With this background, the investigators wonder if, for patients with rheumatoid arthritis, the presence of adversity understood as a history of violence in childhood and abuse due to suffering from rheumatoid arthritis is associated with markers of cellular senescence and with the severity of illness.