Do Oral Contraceptives Prevent Rheumatoid Arthritis?
- J. M. W. Hazes, MD;
- B. A. C. Dijkmans, MD, PhD
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
To the Editor.— Del Junco et al1 state that the use of oral contraceptives has no protective effect against the development of rheumatoid arthritis. Their conclusion is based on the calculation of the relative risk for developing definite or classic rheumatoid arthritis for ever users (1.1) and current users (1.3) relative to never users. With the age at diagnosis as the cutoff point, the use of oral contraceptives in the total control group proved to be roughly comparable with the expected prevalence of current use in the general population: 11.3% and 13.7%, respectively.
It is conceivable that a protective effect of oral contraception, if any, will be more pronounced in the subgroup of definite and classic rheumatoid arthritis patients. The percentage of current users in the matched controls of this subgroup was only 9%, which is considerably lower than the expected prevalence in the general population (13.7% ). Estimation of
