Likelihood for cardiovascular diseases reduced in bronchiectasis vs. COPD

Key takeaways:

• Researchers found significantly reduced odds for hypertension and diabetes among those with bronchiectasis vs. COPD.
• When the dependent variable was cardiovascular disease, COPD was an independent risk factor.

Fewer patients with bronchiectasis vs. COPD had at least one cardiovascular comorbidity/risk factor, according to results published in Respiratory Medicine.

“Subjects with bronchiectasis may experience lower cardiovascular risk than patients with COPD,” Martina Lo Casto, medical specialist in respiratory diseases at the University of Palermo in Italy, and colleagues wrote.

In this retrospective case-control study, Lo Casto and colleagues assessed 63 patients with bronchiectasis (mean age, 64.4 years; 41.3% men; 41.7% smokers) and 63 age and sex-matched patients with COPD (mean age, 64.8 years; 41.3% men; 95.2% smokers) to see if the odds for cardiovascular risk factors and comorbidities varied between the two sets of patients.

Patients with bronchiectasis did not significantly differ from those with COPD when analyzing the odds for four of the six cardiovascular risk factors/comorbidities: ischemic heart disease, cardiac arrhythmias, stroke and hyperlipidemia.

For the remaining two outcomes, researchers found significantly reduced odds among those with bronchiectasis vs. COPD for arterial hypertension (OR = 0.42; 95% CI, 0.2-0.87) and diabetes mellitus (OR = 0.28; 95% CI, 0.09-0.81).

These odds ratios reflected the difference between the bronchiectasis group and the COPD group that researchers observed in the prevalences of arterial hypertension (49.2% vs. 69.8%; P = .029) and diabetes mellitus (7.9% vs. 23.8%; P = .028).

When considering all six cardiovascular risk factors/comorbidities included in this study, the likelihood for having at least one of them was lower in the bronchiectasis group vs. the COPD group (OR = 0.4; 95% CI, 0.18-0.87). Again, a lower proportion of patients with bronchiectasis vs. COPD had at least one of these cardiovascular outcomes (60.3% vs. 79.4%; P = .032).

In a different analysis in which having any of the six cardiovascular outcomes was the dependent variable, independent risk factors included age (OR = 1.128; 95% CI, 1.075-1.193), male sex (OR = 3.241; 95% CI, 1.244-9.229) and COPD (OR = 4.648; 95% CI, 1.484-15.784).

“These preliminary observations require confirmation by further prospective studies,” Lo Casto and colleagues wrote. “Since both [bronchiectasis] and COPD have a higher CV risk than the general population, further prospective studies are needed to assess what are the factors that differentiate these two pathologies, which both share chronic airway inflammation.”