|
HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Why Do Heart Disease Patients Need To
Be Wary Of Flu? If a heart disease patient catches flu, he or she should be extremely cautious, as he or she might be a possible victim of heart attack. It has long been known that flu viruses could worsen a person’s existing medical conditions. Patients with heart disease are particularly vulnerable during the flu pandemics. Flu viruses can frequently induce inflammation in the lungs, and they can also act on the molecular pathways that control the blood coagulation. In the meantime, flu viruses can cause swelling in the heart itself or in the coronary arteries. All these effects could destabilize fatty deposits that line the arterial wall, and could lead to bursting of clots. When situation like this arises, it is very likely that a heart attack might develop. One should also note that heart disease patients, once they get the flu, are more vulnerable to complications like pneumonia and other infections. After analyzing 39 previous studies of heart disease patients, British researchers from University College London found a consistent link between flu and heart attack: up to half of all unexpected flu deaths were due to heart disease. The findings were published online on September 22, 2009 in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The researchers reviewed the mortality figures for acute myocardial infarction (or more commonly known as heart attack) and cardiovascular disease during the outbreaks of flu (current pandemic H1N1 virus was not included) between the years of 1932 and 2008. It was found that between 35 and 50 percent of the increase in deaths during the influenza outbreaks were attributed to cardiovascular problems. Based on the findings, the researchers encouraged people with existing cardiovascular disease to go for influenza vaccination. Nevertheless, there were only a handful of studies to date on whether flu vaccination helps protect heart disease patients. Vaccines for 'seasonal' flu are recommended in many countries for individuals with chronic medical conditions, which generally include cardiovascular disease but not other cardiac problems such as hypertension (high blood pressure). Unfortunately, not too many people at risk are willing to take up the vaccine. In British, only 47.2 percent of people with chronic conditions received the jab for seasonal flu. In the United States, only about one-third of heart disease patients regularly get vaccinated. Since influenza vaccine is effective in preventing influenza and in theory, it is ought to be effective in preventing complications of influenza, according to the researchers. In fact, 2 of the studies analyzed by them showed that heart disease patients who got a flu shot had fewer heart attacks than those who did not. They further pointed out that flu viruses might merely act as a trigger to induce heart attack in patients with cardiovascular disease. In other words, influenza might just bring forward an event that could have happened. Meanwhile, there is evidence showing that when the virus peaks, so do the heart attacks. While it is unclear that if the study results could apply to healthy people with no prior history of heart disease, flu viruses could possibly trigger heart attacks in people with no apparent heart disease but having risk factors like high blood pressure or being overweight. The evidence obtained in the study should be strong enough to remind people that flu should be regarded as equally important as other risk factors for heart disease such as cholesterol or blood pressure. It is the belief of the researchers that the life of heart disease patients could be ultimately be saved if they could be convinced to get a flu vaccine.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright
2007-2012 © HowToPreventHeartDisease.com . All Rights Reserved.d....... |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
