Late-Onset Asthma Linked to Higher Risk of CVD, Stroke
Individuals diagnosed with asthma at age 18 or older have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events than those without asthma, according to recent study findings.
Asthma is known to increase the risk of CVD events. However, this study sought to examine the association specifically in those with late-onset asthma.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
RELATED CONTENT
Bariatric Surgery Helps Relieve Asthma Symptoms
Yoga Linked to Benefits in Patients With Asthma
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To conduct their study, the researchers analyzed data from the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, which followed 1269 participants without CVD at baseline for a mean 13.9 years for development of myocardial infarction, angina, stroke, coronary revascularization, heart failure, or CVD death.
The researchers defined late-onset asthma as physician-diagnosed asthma at age 18 years or older. Of the 1269 participants, 111 had late-onset asthma, and 55 had early-onset asthma at baseline.
After comparing participants with asthma to those without asthma, the researchers found that participants with late-onset asthma had a 1.6-fold higher risk of incident CVD.
“Late‐onset, but not early‐onset asthma was associated with an increased risk of CVD events in this prospective observational study with over a decade of follow-up. Given the public health burden of asthma, further investigations into the mechanisms of this association in specific asthma phenotypes are needed.”
—Amanda Balbi
Reference:
Tattersall MC, Barnet JH, Korcarz CE, Hagen EW, Peppard PE, Stein JH. Late-onset asthma predicts cardiovascular disease events: the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort [published online August 24, 2016]. JAHA. doi:10.1161/JAHA.116.003448.