RheumatologyNov 4, 2026, 12:14 GMT

Rare autoimmune rheumatic diseases linked to higher death rates

Age- and sex-adjusted death rates were 2.6 times the general population’s rate in 2013 and 2.3 times in 2020.

Paper by Megan Rutter, Peter Stilwell, Charlotte Eversfield, +7Fiona A Pearce · University of Nottingham Academic Unit of Lifespan and Population Health

People grouped beneath damaged lungs and a heart contrast with a gray group beside smaller, intact lungs and a heart.

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Populations

Studied:: Cohort study of people with rare autoimmune rheumatic diseases, 2013 to 2020
What changed:: Age- and sex-adjusted death rates were 2.3 times the general population’s rate in 2020
The catch:: The comparison could not separate disease effects from immune-suppressing treatment effects
Why it’s aging research:: Biological age, frailty, function, multimorbidity or death.

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper

People in England with rare autoimmune rheumatic diseases—conditions in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues—were studied in a nationwide retrospective cohort study. It included everyone with a diagnosis recorded in hospital admissions data who was alive in 2013. The cohort was 69.9% female, and its median age rose from 61.5 to 62.5 years during the study.

Linked healthcare and death certificate records documented 53,237 deaths from 2013 to 2020. Overall death rates declined through 2019 but rose in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Death rates from infection, heart and blood vessel disease, COVID-19 and respiratory disease were particularly elevated compared with England’s general population. Deaths from opportunistic infections, which mainly affect people with weakened immune systems, were rare.

Why it matters

For people growing older with these diseases, the authors highlighted targeted infection prevention and management of heart and blood vessel disease risk as priorities for addressing premature mortality.

Caveats

The age- and sex-adjusted comparison could not separate the diseases’ effects from those of immune-suppressing treatment or other health differences. People whose diagnoses appeared only outside hospital admission records were not included.