Cancer patients more likely to die of heart problems, stroke, according to a study

In a new study, researchers have found that a lot of people diagnosed with cancer are more likely to die of heart and blood vessel problems, instead of the main disease.

Even more, for cancers like those affecting breasts, prostate, endometrial and thyroid, around half of the patients will die from cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to the study.

For the study, researchers compared the US general population with over 3.2 million US patients who had been diagnosed with cancer between 1973 and 2012.

They used information contained in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database to look at deaths from CVD, which included heart disease, high blood pressure, cerebrovascular disease, blocked arteries and damage to the aorta- the main artery carrying blood from the heart to the rest of the body.

They adjusted their analyses to take account of factors that could affect the results, such as age, race, and sex, and looked specifically at 28 types of cancer.

Among the 3,234,256 cancer patients, 38 %( 1,228,328) died from cancer and 11 % ( 365, 689) died from CVDs. Among the deaths from CVD, 76 % were due to heart disease, and risk of dying from CVD was highest in the 1st year after a cancer diagnosis and among patients younger than 35 years.

The majority of CVD deaths occurred in patients with cancer of the breast ( a total of 60,409 patients) and prostate (84,534 patients), as these are among the most common cancer to be diagnosed.

In 2012, 61 % of all cancer patients who died from CVD were diagnosed with breast, prostate or bladder cancer.

The proportion of cancer survivors dying from CVD was highest in bladder ( 19% of patients), larynx ( 17%), prostate ( 17%), womb ( 16 %), bowel ( 14 %) and breast ( 12 %) cancers.

Patients who were more likely to die from cancer than from CVD were those with the most aggressive and hard-to-treat cancers, such as cancer of the lung, liver, brain, stomach, gallbladder, pancreas, oesophagus, ovary and multiple myeloma.

A Dr. said , these findings show that a large proportion of certain cancer patients will die of cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, stroke, aneurysm, high BP and damage to blood vessels.

We also found that among survivors with any type of cancer diagnosed before the age of 55 years, the risk if cardiovascular death was more than 10-fold greater than in the general population, the Dr. added.

The risk of death from CVD is several times that of the general population in the 1st year of diagnosis; sometimes, this risk decreases, but for most, this risk increases as survivors are followed for 10 years or more, the researcher continued.

A radiation oncologist, stated the reason why cancer patients were more at risk of dying from CVD within the 1st year of diagnosis might be because when they entered the hospital system, other illnesses and problems, such as heart disease, lung dysfunction and kidney failure were also detected.

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Excess weight, body fat cause cardiovascular diseases

Turns out, excess weight does more harm to the human body than we might think. According to a recent study, excess weight and body fat cause a range of heart and blood vessel  diseases.

In particular, the study published  shows that as body mass index (BMI) and fat mass increase, so does the risk of aortic valve stenosis - a condition in which the valve controlling the flow of blood from the heart to the body's largest blood vessel, the aorta, narrows and fails to open fully.

As part of the study, the team of researchers used a method called Mendelian randomisation to explore this phenomenon further.

Mendelian randomisation is a way of showing whether or not individual risk factors actually cause disease, rather than just being associated with it. It uses genetic variants that are already known to be associated with potential risk factors, such as BMI and body fat, as indirect indicators or "proxies" for these risk factors.

This enables researchers to discover whether the risk factor is the cause of the disease (rather than the other way around), and reduces bias in results because genetic variants are determined at conception and cannot be affected by subsequent external or environmental factors, or by the development of the disease.

The researchers, studied 96 genetic variants associated with BMI and body fat mass to estimate their effect on 14 cardiovascular diseases in 367,703 participants of white-British descent in UK Biobank -- a UK-based national and international resource containing data on 500,000 people, aged 40-69 years.

"The causal association between BMI and fat mass and various heart and blood vessel diseases, in particular, aortic valve stenosis, was unknown. Using Mendelian randomisation we found that higher BMI and fat mass are associated with an increased risk of aortic valve stenosis and most other cardiovascular diseases, suggesting that excess body fat is a cause of cardiovascular disease," he explained.

The researchers also found that the risk of cardiovascular diseases increased with the genetic variants predicting increases in fat mass. The greatest increased risk was also for aortic valve stenosis (46 per cent increased risk), followed by ischemia stroke, transient ischemic attack, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, peripheral artery disease, deep vein thrombosis, high blood pressure, and coronary artery disease.

The researchers stress that although these genetic variants can predispose people to be more likely to gain excess weight, the most important factors implicated in the development of cardiovascular disease are diet and physical activity.

"Our genes can make us somewhat more predisposed to gain body weight but lifestyle factors, such as overeating and lack of physical activity, are the major determinants of overweight. A healthy diet is the cornerstone of cardiovascular disease prevention, and how much we eat should be limited to the amount of energy required to maintain a healthy body weight, which is a BMI of between 20 to 25 kg/m2. People who are predisposed to a higher BMI may need to work a bit harder to maintain a healthy weight," he asserted. 

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