According to the latest study published in the “Current Medical Research and Opinion” journal, a significantly reduced risk of coronary artery diseases was observed with Celecoxib-DMARDs drugs combinations in RA patients. Also, a time-dependent effect with some drugs was also noted.

Yao-Min Hung and colleagues conducted a population-based cohort study to evaluate different anti-RA drug combinations and their relation with CAD risk. The drugs used to make combinations were Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), Sulfasalazine (SSZ), Methotrexate (MTX) and Celecoxib (Cx). A total of two groups were formed; one was a study group containing 6260 newly-diagnosed RA patients of age about 20 years, and other was reference group involving patients who never administered HCQ, SSZ, MTX and Cx. After managing demographic and other co-morbidities, hazard ratio (HR) was estimated by using Cox proportional hazards model. The spline curve of Scaled Schoenfeld residuals was fitted after the violation of proportionality assumption to evaluate the estimated effect on CAD over time for medicine consumption. The occurrence of CAD as per ICD-9-CM codes was used as study end-point.

Throughout the first period of baseline to 3rd year, 4th and 7 years, the adjusted HR noticed was  0.29, 0.46 and 0.42 for  “Cx”, “Cx + HCQ” and  “Cx, HCQ, MTX, and SSZ ever" respectively. But at the second period of 3, 4, or 7–10 years, HR changed to 1.04, 1.16 and 0.59 respectively.  The “Cx, HCQ, MTX, and SSZ ever" showed constant adjusted HR at 0.12. This reflects the combinations of Celecoxib-DMARDs showed time-varying drug effect and were related to lower CAD risk.