Kim H, et al. - Using the Korean National Claims Database, researchers examined retrospective cohorts of early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients to estimate the incidence rate (IR) as well as risk factors for opportunistic infections (OI) in these subjects. In 2010, overall 14,081 incident RA cases were recruited. Over a year, early and overall RA (n = 226,838) cases were examined for IR and standardized incidence ratio (SIR) of OI. In early RA, the estimated IR of OI was 3.81/100 person-years and for overall RA, it was 3.67/100 person-years. The estimated SIR for OI in early RA was 1.14. In early RA vs in overall RA patients, a tendency of developing opportunistic infections, especially herpes zoster and candidiasis, was more often documented. Increased OI was reported in early RA patients in relation to age, female sex, comorbidities and corticosteroid use.