Pulmonary function may signal cardiometabolic disease
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Pulmonary function levels may be used to predict risk for cardiometabolic diseases and cardiometabolic multimorbidity, researchers reported in Chest.
“Few studies have investigated the prospective association of pulmonary function with the risk of developing cardiometabolic multimorbidity,” Guochen Li, MD, from the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Medical College of Soochow University School of Public Health in Suzhou, China, and colleagues wrote.
The prospective study included data from 357,433 individuals without cardiometabolic diseases at baseline and 35,034 individuals with one cardiometabolic disease at baseline from the UK Biobank. Researchers assessed associations between baseline pulmonary function and incident cardiometabolic outcomes.
Researchers measured pulmonary function using FVC or FEV1. Cardiometabolic multimorbidity was defined as the coexistence of at least two cardiometabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.
During a median follow-up of more than 11 years, 8.47% participants developed a single cardiometabolic disease and 0.82% developed cardiometabolic multimorbidity. The researchers reported more pronounced associations between FVC and new-onset cardiometabolic multimorbidity and type 2 diabetes. Patients in the highest quartile of FVC had increased odds of cardiometabolic multimorbidity (adjusted OR = 0.525; 95% CI, 0.468-0.589), type 2 diabetes alone (aOR = 0.534; 95% CI, 0.498-0.572), stroke alone (aOR = 0.817; 95% CI, 0.751-0.888) and coronary heart disease alone (aOR = 0.8; 95% CI, 0.764-0.837) compared with the lowest quartile of FVC.
Among participants with a single cardiometabolic disease at baseline, FVC was associated with increased risk for cardiometabolic multimorbidity in those with type 2 diabetes (HR = 0.727; 95% CI, 0.649-0.814), coronary heart disease (HR = 0.635; 95% CI, 0.555-0.727) and stroke (HR = 0.783; 95% CI, 0.642-0.955).
The researchers reported similar results for FEV1.
“Our study highlights that pulmonary function could be used as a valuable predictor for the tailored prevention of individual cardiometabolic diseases and cardiometabolic multimorbidity,” the researchers wrote. “Stratifying different high-risk populations through pulmonary function to implement precision medicine may have far-reaching clinical implications.”