Increased lifespan, decreased mortality, and delayed cognitive decline in osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is associated with delayed cognitive decline, decreased mortality and altered profile of adverse event accumulation

Figure 1 presents cognitive performance data collected in osteoarthritis (OA), non-arthritic control (CONT) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) cohorts in three independent datasets, NSHAP³⁰, TILDA³¹, and Kaiser Permanente³². Figure 1A,B show that initial cognitive scores are higher in OA patients as compared to the control and to the RA cohorts. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) cohort was included in the study as a positive control due to well-established increase in mortality observed in RA as compared to non-arthritis cohorts. If our methodology is correct, we expect to re-capture this effect in datasets analyzed. After assessment with either MOCA or MMSE questionnaires, in patients with OA cognitive decline was delayed, on average, by 4 year as compared to…