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Women with endometriosis were at increased risk for certain types of CVD, according to a study of nearly 280,000 patients aged 16 to 50 years in the United Kingdom.
“CVD risk in young women is under-perceived by both medical personnel and among the women themselves,” Kelvin Okoth, MPH, a research fellow at the Institute of Applied Health Research in the U.K., and colleagues wrote in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Female sex-specific risk factors for CVD, including adverse pregnancy outcomes, polycystic ovary syndrome and premature menopause are well documented in the literature. However, the association between endometriosis and CVD is under studied.”
In a cohort study, the researchers compared cardiovascular outcomes among 56,090 women diagnosed with endometriosis between Jan. 1, 1995, and Dec. 31, 2018, and 223,669 women who were not diagnosed with the disorder, matching them by several characteristics.
Okoth and colleagues reported that the adjusted HR for composite CVD — including ischemic heart disease (IHD), heart failure (HF) and cerebrovascular disease — was 1.24 (95% CI, 1.13-1.37) for women with endometriosis vs. those without the disorder. Broken down by CVD subtype, the aHRs were 1.4 (95% CI, 1.22-1.61) for IHD, 1.19 (95% CI, 1.04-1.36) for cerebrovascular disease, 1.26 (95% CI, 1.11-1.43) for arrhythmia and 1.12 (95% CI, 1.07-1.17) for hypertension. There was no association between endometriosis and risk for heart failure or death.
The incidence of endometriosis among U.K. women was 12.3 per 10,000 person-years in 1998 and 11.5 per 10,000 person-years in 2017, according to the researchers. The annual prevalence of the disorder “gradually increased” from 119.7 per 10,000 population to 201.3 per 10,000 population during the same period, they said.
Okoth and colleagues also found that — consistent with other research — the incidence of endometriosis was higher among women of higher socioeconomic status, suggesting that “socioeconomic status may be a proxy marker for lifestyle risk factors associated with endometriosis in the U.K.”