Osteoarthritis is associated with many and varied comorbidities, according to a recent presentation at the EULAR European Congress of Rheumatology.

Researchers from the Netherlands examined 58 comorbidities in 1,890,712 adults. Knee OA was associated with a statistically increased risk of 30 comorbidities including gout, cataracts, hearing loss and anaemia.

Most commonly, people with knee OA were more than twice as likely to be obese (hazard ratio [HR] 2.55) or have fibromyalgia (HR 2.06) compared with study controls.

Knee OA was also associated with, for example, an increased risk of polymyalgia (by 72 per cent), rheumatoid arthritis (52 per cent) and drug abuse (40 per cent).

Hip OA was associated with a statistically increased risk of 26 comorbidities, including polymyalgia rheumatica (by 81 per cent), fibromyalgia (70 per cent), spinal disc herniation (64 per cent), thromboembolic disease (47 per cent) and alcohol abuse (44 per cent).

“This suggests that the management of osteoarthritis should consider the risk of other long-term conditions and that further research on causality between OA and comorbidity is needed,” the authors conclude.

(Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases DOI: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2022-eular.836)