Autoimmune disorders are related to cardiovascular disease for fairly obvious reasons in that they each cause an immune attack on a body part that ultimately causes increased inflammation within the circulatory system. Autoimmune conditions known to increase cardiovascular disease include Rhumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, and Celiac Disease. It is important that we pay special attention to our patients with autoimmune conditions as these patients can have a rather bad outcome if we don't emphasize cardiovascular risk reduction within their plan of care. Often times patients with autoimmune conditions have problems with entering a state of remission that I believe relates to the other inflammatory conditions that patients simultaneously experience. For instance, you could be struggling to get a rheumatoid arthritis patient into remission because of their simultaneous problem with insulin resistance, obstructive sleep apnea, and major depression. I see this complex patient with multiple inflammatory disease states making it hard to get the patient's rheumatoid arthritis to remission because of a "divide and conquer" type problem. I would like for each clinician treating a patient with an autoimmune condition to consider that when the patient has other inflammatory conditions going on, that a broad net needs to be cast over each inflammatory disease state treating each problem from an inflammatory perspective. When you put the other inflammatory disease states into a more quiescent position, the patient's immune system can now focus on the autoimmune condition such as RA that you are trying to put into remission. I would like to pose the premise that when you keep these other 7 inflammatory disease state conditions that cause CV disease under control from an inflammatory perspective, that you will have considerably more success keeping each autoimmune patient in remission no matter which disease modifying drug that you are using. It would be nice to see long term studies within the rheumatological community to better analyze this concept but for now I am sharing an observational analysis that I have noted within my clinical experience.