Search for: [Abstract = "helial dysfunction in RA and axSpA. It is still unknown why there are young patients with short\-duration rheumatoid arthritis who have microvascular endothelial dysfunction and older patients with long\-term disease who do not. Classical cardiovascular risk factors \(i.e. older age, smoking, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, diabetes\) do not completely explain the presence of endothelial dysfunction in patients with RA and axSpA, but there is research that did not exclude patients with those factors. As a consequence, certain studies could identify endothelial dysfunction caused by traditional cardiovascular risk factors and not only RA or axSpA itself. The results of the studies suggest that neither the duration nor activity of the disease is sufficient, however, in specific cases it might be necessary to induce endothelial dysfunction. In particular, it remains unexplained to what extent endothelial dysfunction is due to a specific inflammatory burden linked to chronic inflammatory arthropathies or to comorbidities known to represent cardiovascular risk. These uncertainties are related to the design of previous studies detecting endothelial dysfunction in patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases, which often involved heterogeneous groups, long\-term pathophysiological progression, and the use of drugs that can affect the endothelium, such as glucocorticoids and non\-steroid anti\-"]
