Children suffering from juvenile idiopathic arthritis are more than 4 times more likely to develop cancer according to a new study published online in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism this month. The same study found that the increased cancer risk appear to be the result of the disease itself rather than the treatment, which normally consists of methotrexate and/or TNF inhibitors.

Timothy Beukelman of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues looked at cancer rates in a group of 7812 children suffering from juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and compared them to two control groups who did not suffer from the disease.

Heavy babies could be more than twice as likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than babies of a normal weight according to an American study published this month in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

The study focused on 13,639 women from the Nurses Health Study who were followed between 1976 and 2002. During that time 683 (5.0%) of the women developed rheumatoid arthritis.

Mothers who breast-feed for more than a year are around 50% less likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis according to a new study published this month in the journal Annals of Rheumatic Diseases.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Malmo University Hospital in Sweden, compared 136 individuals who had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis to 544 women who were free of the illness.

Studies have found that smoking, as well as being a strong risk factor for cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and other respiratory problems, can also increase an individuals risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.

One of the largest studies on the impact of smoking on rheumatoid arthritis was a British case-control study published in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases in 2001. In that study, 239 people who had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis were compared to 239 healthy control subjects who were matched by age, sex, and job status.

Several studies have linked rheumatoid arthritis with an increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases such as strokes and myocardial infarctions (heart attacks).

One study, published in the journal Circulation in 2003, involved 114,342 women from the Nurses Health Study who were followed for 18 years. At the end of the study, 7,786 women (7%) reported to have developed symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. The researchers found that both heart attacks and strokes were more common in women with rheumatoid arthritis compared to those without the disease.