Analysts locate a higher danger of coronary occasions amid the 3 months after a disease. The body's resistant reaction, they propose, may clarify why contaminations "trigger" heart assault and stroke.
The term cardiovascular disease (CVD) covers a scope of conditions: from heart assault and coronary illness to stroke, hypertension, and heart disappointment.
Upwards of 84 million individuals in the Assembled States are living with one of the conditions above, and 2,200 individuals bite the dust each day subsequently.
A few components may raise the danger of cardiovascular conditions. A portion of these elements are modifiable, for example, smoking, elevated cholesterol, and hypertension. Different elements, for example, sex, race, age, and family ancestry, can't be changed.
Be that as it may, there are additionally various "intense" hazard factors, or triggers, that can prompt CVD. Some exploration has connected urinary diseases and pneumonia, for example, with the danger of having heart assaults and stroke.
A new study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, zooms in on the link between infections and adverse cardiovascular events.
Dr. Kamakshi Lakshminarayan, a neurologist and associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, is the senior author of the study.
Studying infections and coronary events risk
Dr. Lakshminarayan and colleagues examined 1,312 people who had had a coronary event such as a heart attack, or myocardial infarction, and compared them with 727 people who had had an ischemic stroke.
The study included both outpatients and people who were hospitalized to receive treatment for their infection.
The researchers looked for infections that these people developed up to 1–2 years before the cardiovascular event. The most commonly reported infections were urinary tract infections, pneumonia, and respiratory infections.
Overall, the study found that approximately 37 percent of the participants with heart disease had developed an infection in the 3 months leading up to the coronary event. Among people with stroke, this number was almost 30 percent.
In the first 2 weeks after having an infection, the risk of a stroke or a heart attack was the highest.
Though the analysis found this link among both inpatients and outpatients, people who received care in the hospital were more likely to have a coronary event.
Immune response may elicit coronary events
Although the study was observational, the scientists speculate on the mechanism that may explain the results.
During an infection, explains Dr. Lakshminarayan, the body's immune system produces more white blood cells to fight it off. However, this immune response also makes small blood cells, called platelets, stickier.
In a healthy body, the role of platelets is to bind to a damaged blood vessel and create a blood clot. This is very useful for accidental cuts, for example, but too many platelets, or platelets that are too sticky, can raise the risk of blood clots.
"The infection appears to be the trigger for changing the finely tuned balance in the blood and making us more prone to thrombosis, or clot formation," says Dr. Lakshminarayan. "It's a trigger for the blood vessels to get blocked up and puts us at higher risk of serious events like heart attack and stroke."
In an accompanying editorial, Juan Badimon — who was not involved in the research — explains why the risk of a coronary event may have been higher in the hospitalized group. He says that for these people, the infection might have been more severe.
"And if the infection is that severe, we can assume a stronger inflammatory response will result in a higher cardiovascular risk," he said in an interview.
Badimon is a professor of medicine and the director of the atherothrombosis research unit at Mount Sinai School of Medicine's Cardiovascular Institute in New York City, NY.
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