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What Do You Say when a Patient with RA Asks: Do You Believe that the Weather Affects my Joints?

Dr. Janet Pope  Featured
June 8 2016 4:56 PM ET via RheumReports RheumReports

How appropriate to talk about weather affecting the joints of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) when the EULAR 2016 meeting is in England! London was supposed to be sunny all week, but it is London and it does rain here…all the time. In fact, I am writing this during a storm.

Previous studies from a meta-analysis have found no effect of temperature, barometric patterns or other weather changes on RA, except perhaps there are effects that are minor in some patients.1  Yet in my clinic I think that approximately 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 patients with RA tell me they flare with changes in weather (i.e. they say things like "My joints hurt before the storm comes" or "If it is rainy and cold I ache more"). So this could be an old wives' tale but we hear it not infrequently.

At this EULAR meeting, data on meterological effects on disease activity in RA are being presented by Mandt et al (FRI0092) from Vienna. The group studied more than 1400 patients with RA by collecting the usual outcome data and compared these against meteorological variables (temperature and relative humidity). They evaluated these variables on the days that RA outcomes were measured during clinic visits, with many patients having several visits over a 10-year period. 

Higher temperature and lower humidity were significantly associated with lower CDAI with very strong P values. Higher pain and more swollen joints were reported in patients when lower temperatures were recorded, and especially if there was more humidity. 

So, if a patient needs a medical note to go south for the winter, maybe we should write one! All kidding aside, the findings are relative and small changes and would not be impactful compared to our more effective therapies, but it shows that we should listen to patients when they tell us they are worse during a cool damp storm!

1.  Eur J Pain. 2011 Jan;15(1):5-10. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpain.2010.05.003. Epub 2010 May 31.


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About the Author

Dr. Janet Pope
Dr. Janet Pope

Dr. Janet Pope is Professor of Medicine at Western University and Division Head of Rheumatology. Dr. Pope's research interests include epidemiologic studies in scleroderma, classification criteria in systemic sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.

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