Fig. 1

Obesity in RA significantly associates with higher DAS courses, especially in ACPA-positive RA

Trajectories of DAS44 per BMI category for all RA patients (A), ACPA-positive (B), and ACPA-negative RA patients (C). All trajectories are shown for mean age of patients per population (overall RA, ACPA-positive and ACPA-negative separately). The number of measurements per time point is presented in Supplementary Fig. 3; the distribution of the patients between the different BMI categories was similar during the 5-year follow-up. A RA patients with obesity: + 0.31 points higher DAS (95% CI 0.17, 0.45; p-value < 0.001). B ACPA-positive patients with obesity: + 0.43 points higher DAS (95% CI 0.23, 0.64; p-value 0.002) compared to normal weight. C ACPA-negative patients with obesity: trend towards + 0.16 higher DAS compared to normal weight (95% CI − 0.03, 0.36; p-value 0.62). Patterns were visualized based on estimated marginal means resulting from the linear mixed models. *p-value < 0.05, compared with normal weight patients. Abbreviations: ACPA, anti-citrullinated protein antibodies; DAS, disease activity score; BMI, body mass index, N. S not significant