Vascular disease risk factors may predict mortality
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Whether elderly men have a high or low risk of dying in the next four years can be estimated by using just two cardiovascular risk factors—plaque in the arteries of the neck and levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), an immune system protein that promotes inflammation, the results of a study published in the American Journal of Medicine indicate.
“Ways to predict the risk of cardiovascular events or all-cause mortality have largely been derived from populations in which old and very old subjects were underrepresented,” write Dr. Michiel L. Bots, of University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, and colleagues.
The team therefore conducted a study to examine the usefulness of markers of inflammation and the presence of arterial plaque (atherosclerosis) in predicting all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in 403 men who were an average of 78 years old at study entry.
The investigators evaluated the subjects for conventional cardiovascular risk factors, as well as IL-6 and other proteins that promote inflammation. Using ultrasound technology, they assessed plaque in the carotid arteries, which are located in the neck and supply the brain with oxygen.
A total of 75 men (19 percent) died during 48 months of follow-up and the cause of death was cardiovascular disease in 31 subjects. The average time to death from the start of the study was 30 months.
The combination of high levels of IL-6 and number of carotid plaques identified whether the men had a low or a high risk of mortality.
On the other hand, conventional risk factors, including age, cholesterol level, blood pressure and diabetes, were poor predictors of mortality in this age group.
SOURCE: American Journal of Medicine, June 2006.
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