SAN DIEGO – Having asthma appears to significantly increase your risk for cardiovascular events, while having allergic rhinitis appears to protect your risk for such events, results from a large cohort study demonstrated.
Studies of mouse models have suggested that Th1 inflammation "is associated with atherosclerosis and plaque development, while the Th2 or general allergic response seems to be protective against atherosclerosis," Dr. Angelina Crans Yoon said during a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. At the same time, results from human studies regarding the association between allergic rhinitis and cardiovascular events are mixed, said Dr. Crans Yoon, a first-year allergy fellow at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center.
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A recent study says that asthma can significantly increase risk for cardiovascular events, while allergic rhinitis offers protection from such risks.
In an effort to assess the relationship between cardiovascular disease and allergic rhinitis, she and her associates used the Kaiser Permanente Southern California regional database and ICD-9 codes to compare the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events and all-cause mortality in a cohort of 109,229 allergic rhinitis patients and 92,775 asthma patients who were seen between Jan. 1, 1995, and Dec. 31, 2012. The cohorts were matched by age, sex, and ethnicity to reference cohorts and followed for a median of 8 years.
Dr. Crans Yoon reported that patients with allergic rhinitis had significantly lower risk for myocardial infarction (hazard ratio, 0.75), cerebrovascular disease (HR, 0.81), and all-cause mortality (HR, 0.51), yet their risk of all cardiovascular events was equal to that of the control cohort (HR, 0.97). At the same time, patients with asthma had a significantly higher risk of all cardiovascular disease (HR, 1.36), yet no significantly higher risk of cerebrovascular disease (HR, 1.03) or all-cause mortality (HR, 1.00).
The findings "led us to think of more questions," Dr. Crans Yoon said. "Why is there this decreased risk of events in patients with allergic rhinitis? What explains the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with asthma? Is atopy related to these differences? We started some secondary analyses looking at medication use. It looks like if you use any medications for allergic rhinitis or asthma, you have a decreased risk of some of these events, except for long-acting beta-agonists, which is consistent with previous reports. We’re also starting to look at specific IgE data on these patients. It looks like positive IgE testing may be associated with a decreased risk of all these events."
She speculated that asthma physiology may explain why patients with asthma had significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease but not cerebrovascular disease. "The interesting point is that potentially, atopic asthmatics may not have the same increased risk," she said.
Dr. Crans Yoon said that she had no relevant financial conflicts to disclose.