Asthma Might Raise Heart Disease Risk

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters Health) - Asthma, a disease that affects more than 10 million Americans, may increase the risk of heart attack, a scientist reported Friday.

Dr. Carlos Iribarren, of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, California, said his study of 1,000 people who thought they had asthma is the first to suggest that the condition is a heart disease risk factor in nonsmokers.

But he and another expert caution that other illnesses, including heart disease, can cause shortness of breath and this may have confounded the results.

In his presentation at the American Heart Association's 41st Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Prevention, Iribarren reported that ``a diagnosis of asthma was associated with a 33% increase in risk for hospitalization or death (from heart disease).''

People who said they were receiving treatment for their asthma had an even greater increased risk--92% greater than non-asthmatics. But Iribarren again cautioned that there might be other explanations for this, such as the suggestion that ''being treated may be a marker for more serious disease, which would suggest a frailer patient.''

The researcher studied 22,036 people who were enrolled in the study in 1979 and followed for 20 years. The patients were asked if they had ever been told by a doctor that they had asthma. ``If the answer was yes, they were also asked if they were being treated for their asthma,'' he said. According to the findings, 652 women and 410 men reported that they had been diagnosed with asthma.

Since the study is retrospective and is based on the participants' own recollections about diagnosis, Iribarren urged caution in interpreting the results. ``I don't want to be waving some type of red flag about this,'' he said. But he did add that he thinks the link between asthma and heart disease is real.

Dr. Sidney Smith, chief science officer for the American Heart Association, said the findings were intriguing but he pointed out that studies that rely on ``self-reports of diagnosis have a number of problems. One area that would be important to address would be the precise definition of asthma.''

Iribarren agreed with this shortcoming and noted that ``many times it is difficult for both patients and physicians to tickle out whether shortness of breath is caused by asthma or congestive heart failure.''

For experts who try to nail down the causes for heart disease, the most intriguing aspect of the finding is that asthma is an allergic, inflammatory disease. Many recent studies have suggested that inflammation plays a role in heart disease.

Smith said that the Iribarren's study does ``once again point to inflammation. Inflammatory disorders do seem to play an important role in the manifestation of coronary heart disease, but whether they are a cause is very unclear.''

Reference Source 89

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