High risk of heart attack in chronic intestinal inflammation

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are significantly more likely to have heart attacks. This is especially true for younger people.

Chronic inflammation damages blood vessels: it increases the risk of stiff and narrowed arteries. Atherosclerosis of this kind prepares the ground for cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks, heart failure or strokes. We have known this connection for a long time. Among other things, it affects rheumatism patients.

Researchers led by Muhammad S. Panhwar from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have now used a huge data set with 17.5 million patients to investigate whether this also applies to people with chronically inflamed bowels.

Twice as many heart attacks

In fact, the heart attack rate in the 211,000 patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis was twice as high as the other participants. However, many of them also suffered from other diseases that increase their risk of cardiovascular disease, including diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol - and they smoked more often. After the scientists eliminated these factors, there was still a 23 percent increase in risk.

"Chronic inflammatory bowel disease should be rated as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease," says study leader Panhwarvon.

Vessels age earlier

The connection is all the more serious as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis already develop between the ages of 15 and 30 years. The constant inflammation damages the vessels early on, which causes the arteries to age much earlier than usual.

In fact, the researchers found that younger patients were nine times more likely to have a heart attack than usual. Women under 40 were even more at risk than men in this age group. Because with them, the chronic intestinal inflammation is usually more severe - and then the vascular damage is also more serious.

Overall, however, heart attacks are rare in this age group: only five percent of heart attacks affect people who are younger than 40 years old.

Take heart attack symptoms seriously

Doctors should take heart attack symptoms such as chest pain in younger IBD patients very seriously, ”says Panhwarvon. In addition, additional risk factors for cardiovascular diseases should be minimized as far as possible.

The patients themselves can contribute to this: by eating a healthy heart, doing sports, refraining from smoking and learning a relaxation technique.

320,000 IBD patients in Germany

It is estimated that around 320,000 people in Germany have Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis. Both diseases progress in bursts. While the entire digestive tract - from the mouth to the anus - can be affected with Chron disease and all layers of the intestinal wall become inflamed, ulcerative colitis is usually limited to the large intestine and only affects the intestinal mucosa.

Both forms of the disease can significantly impair the quality of life with severe diarrhea, abdominal cramps and exhaustion.

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