Response to letter regarding article, ''anti-tumor necrosis factor-α therapy reduces aortic inflammation and stiffness in patients with rheumatoid arthritis''.

We thank the authors for their interest in our study.1 They raise several relevant points, which we address below. We agree that further work is needed to ascertain the origin of 18F-fluoro-deoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Although we cannot be certain, we feel that subclinical vasculitis is the most likely explanation for our findings for several reasons. First, we compared aortic FDG uptake in rheumatoid arthritis subjects with an atherosclerotic population with stable cardiovascular disease, matched for age. We were careful to exclude those rheumatoid arthritis subjects with established cardiovascular disease or diabetes mellitus. Even so, we found that the aortic FDG uptake …