Inflammatory Skin Disease Linked to Increased Heart Rate

In a recent study, resting heartrate was significantly higher in patients with severe hidradenitis suppurativa (HS).

HS has been linked with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, subclinical atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease. In a recent study, researchers identified 404 individuals with HS and 19,001 controls without HS from The Danish General Population Study. They staged HS by severity using the Hurley score. Using 12-lead resting electrocardiograms, electrocardiographic parameters, heart rate (HR), PR-interval, QRS-duration, JTc-interval and QTc-interval were collected.
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Overall, severe HS was significantly associated with increased heart rate across all models, and mean QRS-duration was significantly shorter in the mild HS group, but not in the moderate and severe HS groups.

“Mean resting heart rate in severe HS was significantly higher compared to controls. Given that resting heart rate is associated with increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, and that HS patients have increased risk of cardiovascular events, this finding is potentially important, easily testable and intervenable.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Juhl CR, Miller IM, Jemec GB, Kanters JK, Ellervik C. Hidradenitis Suppurativa and electrocardiographic changes - a cross-sectional population study [published online July 1, 2017]. Br J Dermatol. doi: 10.1111/bjd.15778.