Could a Childhood Infection Increase CV Risk Later in Life?
Infections during childhood showed an association with an increased, early risk of heart attack in adults.
“Infectious diseases such as typhoid fever, measles, chicken pox, bronchitis, tuberculosis and dengue fever are common in Indonesian children. We hypothesized that infections experienced in childhood and adolescence might adversely affect the vasculature and initiate atherosclerosis, leading to premature acute coronary syndromes (ACS) or heart attacks,” explained Andriany Qanitha, lead author of the study and PhD candidate at the Academic Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
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For the population-based study, researchers evaluated 153 patients with a first-time ACS incident before the age of 56 years. They then matched participants to 153 controls without any history of ACS in the Maskassar region of Indonesia.
Researchers defined a severe infection as having a fever for 3 days or longer or hospitalization due to the infectious disease.
During the study period, researchers used questionnaires and interviews to ascertain information on infection history during 4 periods of the patient’s early life: infancy and pre-school, elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school.
Controls and family members of the patients were also subjected to interviews and questionnaires to determine infection history.
The recorded data included sex, occupation, education level, dietary habits, age, smoking status, monthly income, family history of diabetes, sudden cardiac death, heart disease, and known history of diabetes and hypertension. Of the participants, 81.7% were male.
The study showed a significant link between premature ACS risk and childhood infection (2.5 to 4.2, adjusted odds ratio).
After a Framingham risk score (FRS) was used to rank participants as low, intermediate, or high risk, they found that levels of childhood infections rose with additional cardiovascular risk factors in low, intermediate, and high levels (odds ratios of 1.5. 4.4 and 10.0, respectively).
Investigators noted that FRS was based on total and HDL cholesterol, diabetes, blood pressure, smoking status, use of blood pressure medications, age, and gender.
The complete study was presented at the Acute Cardiovascular Care conference in Vienna, Austria on Saturday October 17, 2015.
-Michelle Canales Butcher
Reference:
European Society of Cardiology. Childhood infections associated with increased risk of early heart attack. October 17, 2015. www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/Last-5-years/childhood-infections-associated-with-increased-risk-of-early-heart-attack. Accessed October 19, 2015.