Children who succumb to a serious infection in infancy are at risk of going on to develop arthritis early in their adult lives, researchers warned today.
If an infant needs admission to hospital for an infection, the risk of developing arthritis is doubled, according to a Swedish study.
Surprisingly the research found that babies that were underweight or premature faced a reduced risk of developing the disease, according to a report in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
The likely explanation is that serious infection may trigger something in the immune system, affecting the way it develops.
Researcher Dr Cecilia Carlens, of Karolinska University Hospital and Institute, Stockholm, studied more than 3,500 people.
A second study in the same journal warns that women faced increased risk of knee or joint replacement if they have taken hormone replacement therapy.
The study, involving some 1.3 million British women, also found that the number of children a woman has given birth to also increases the risk.
Researcher Dr Bette Liu, of Oxford University, found that taking HRT was linked to an increased risk of having a knee replacement of 58 per cent.
However this may simply mean that women at the greatest risk of osteoporosis are more likely than others to have been prescribed HRT.
Online First Ann Rheum Dis 2008 doi: 10.1136/ard.2008.089342; doi 10.1136/ard.2008.095653
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