Larsson et al identified risk factors for giant cell arteritis in women. These can help identify women who may be candidates for temporal artery biopsy. The authors are from Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Goteborg, Sweden.
Patient selection: women aged t0 to 69 years of age
Risk factors identified by multivariate analysis:
(1) current or past cigarette smoker
(2) early menopause (before 43 years of age)
(3) low body mass index
(4) prolonged breast feeding
where:
• The risk increased 10% for each 1 kg per square meter drop in the BMI (or about 3 kilograms). Unfortunately the authors did not a mean BMI for comparison.
• In theory being obese should reduce the risk.
• While the beta coefficients are given in Table 2, the constant for the logistic regression formula is not provided.
• The odds ratio for breast feeding was 1.029 per month. The cumulative risk is based on taking the exponential of this for the number of months (1.029^(months)). A period greater than 24 months gives an odd ratio of 2.0.
• The authors' hypothesis is that estrogen deficiency may contribute to the pathogenesis of the arteritis.
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