Investigators may have uncovered the relationship between hormonal and reproductive factors and the risk of rheumatoid arthritis in women, according to a recent study published by Jiang et al in RMD Open: Rheumatic & Musculoskeletal Diseases. Investigators used the UK Biobank to identify 3,313 women with rheumatoid arthritis. They discovered that those who were aged 14 years and older at menarche were more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis compared with those aged 13 years at menarche (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.13, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.02–1.26). Further, women who were younger than 45 years when they began menopause (HR = 1.46), who underwent a hysterectomy (HR = 1.40, 95% CI = 1.25–1.56), who had less than 33 reproductive years (HR = 1.39, 95% CI = 1.21–1.59), who underwent oophorectomy (HR = 1.21, 95% CI = 1.08–1.35), or had four or more children compared with two children (HR = 1.18, 95% CI = 1.04–1.34) were at heightened risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. Hormone-replacement therapy (HR = 1.46, 95% CI = 1.35–1.57) and therapy duration (HR = 1.02, 95% CI = 1.01–1.03) were both correlated with the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. The investigators concluded that their new findings should be incorporated into risk-assessment and management strategies to reduce the burden of rheumatoid arthritis in this patient population.