Pneumonia or sepsis infections may up stroke risk: study

Pneumonia or sepsis infections may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke by six times, a study warns.
"Severe infections in adulthood are associated with a contemporaneously raised risk of cardiovascular disease," said Scott Montgomery from the Orebro University in Sweden.
Researchers found that infection was associated with a 6.33-fold raised risk of cardiovascular disease during the first year after the infection.
In the second and third years following an infection, cardiovascular disease risk remained raised by 2.47 and 2.12 times, researchers said.
Risk decreased with time but was still raised for at least five years after the infection by nearly two-fold (hazard ratio 1.87).

During the follow-up period, a total of 46,754 men (19.7 per cent) had a first diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. There were 9,987 hospital admissions for pneumonia or sepsis among 8,534 men who received these diagnoses.

Similar findings were observed for coronary heart disease, stroke, and fatal cardiovascular disease. The persistently raised risk could not be explained by subsequent severe infections.
"Our results indicate that the risk of cardiovascular disease, including coronary heart disease and stroke, was increased after hospital admission for sepsis or pneumonia," said Cecilia Bergh from Orebro University.
"The risk remained notably raised for three years after infection and was still nearly two-fold after five years," Bergh added.

Conventional cardiovascular risk factors are still important but infection may be the primary source of risk for a limited time, researchers said.
The team examined if hospital admission for sepsis or pneumonia is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the years following infection, and whether there is a period of particularly heightened risk.
They studied about 2,36,739 men born between 1952 and 1956 who underwent extensive physical and psychological examinations at around age 18 years as part of compulsory military conscription assessments.
Researchers obtained infection and cardiovascular disease diagnoses from a register that has recorded information on patients admitted to hospital since 1964. The men were followed from late adolescence into middle age.

They analysed the associations between a first infection with sepsis or pneumonia that resulted in hospital admission with subsequent cardiovascular disease risk at pre-specified time intervals post-infection.
The study was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.