Study casts doubt about link between eczema, cardiovascular disease – Medical Xpress

June 16, 2017 Micrograph of a heart with fibrosis (yellow) and amyloidosis (brown). Movat's stain. Credit: Nephron/Wikipedia

For the roughly 7 percent of adults who live with atopic dermatitis, a common form of eczema, a new study reports a little good news: Despite recent findings to the contrary, the skin condition is likely not associated with an increase in cardiovascular risk factors or diseases.

"In our study, people who reported having atopic dermatitis were not at any increased risk for high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart attacks or strokes," said lead author Dr. Aaron Drucker, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a physician with the Lifespan Physicians Group.

The findings appear in the British Journal of Dermatology.

Drucker and a team of co-authors made the findings by analyzing the records of 259,119 adults aged 30-74 in the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project. Drucker led the data analysis with the hypothesis, suggested by two recent studies, that people with atopic dermatitis (AD) would be significantly more likely to have various cardiovascular problems.

Instead, he found that the opposite was the case.

A diagnosis of AD was associated with somewhat reduced risk of stroke (0.79 times the odds), hypertension (0.87 times), diabetes (0.78 times) and heart attack (0.87 times). Drucker emphasized, however, that he does not believe that AD is protectivegiven the mixed evidence accumulated by researchers, the best conclusion is that AD is likely not positively associated with cardiovascular disease.

"It's important to make this clear so it doesn't get misinterpreted: Even though we found lower rates of these outcomes with atopic dermatitis, we are not interpreting that as atopic dermatitis decreasing the risk," he said.

The findings are based on a statistical analysis that accounted for confounders including age, gender, ethnic background, body-mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, sleep, physical activity and asthma.

The suspicion that AD might be associated with cardiovascular disease has likely arisen from the better-substantiated association researchers have found between the skin condition psoriasis and cardiovascular disease, Drucker said. But while the two inflammatory skin ailments share some clinical similarities, he said, they work differently at the molecular level, which might explain why only one may be associated with cardiovascular disease.

"In response to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease discovered for psoriasis, clinicians and psoriasis patients have been encouraged to more actively screen for and manage cardiovascular disease," Drucker said. "It appears that similar measures may not be warranted for atopic dermatitis."

Drucker acknowledged that the study could not answer the question of whether AD severity might correlate with cardiovascular disease. He said he is pursuing that question in new research, though there is a paucity of datasets that include both severity information and cardiovascular disease diagnoses.

Explore further: Vitamin D levels not linked to asthma or dermatitis

More information: British Journal of Dermatology (2017). DOI: 10.1111/bjd.15727/full

Vitamin D supplementation is unlikely to reduce the risk of asthma in children or adults, atopic dermatitis, or allergies according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine by Brent Richards, of McGill University, Canada, ...

(HealthDay)Atopic dermatitis (AD) is associated with increased risk of alopecia areata (AA) and vitiligo, according to research published online Jan. 18 in Allergy.

(HealthDay)Evidence that wet wrap therapy (WWT) is more effective than topical steroids for the treatment of atopic dermatitis is mixed, according to a review published online Nov. 8 in the British Journal of Dermatology.

(HealthDay)Children aged 4 to 9 years with atopic dermatitis and with frequent use of emollients have increased urinary levels of low-molecular weight (LMW) phthalate metabolites and parabens, according to a study published ...

Superficially, psoriasis and atopic dermatitis may appear similar but their commonalities are only skin deep. Atopic dermatitis, also known as eczema, is primarily driven by an allergic reaction, while psoriasis is considered ...

There's a typical "career" for some allergic people, and it starts very early on the skin: babies develop atopic dermatitis, food allergies may follow, then comes asthma and later on hay fever. A group of scientists led by ...

Scientists at the University of Notre Dame have found that exposure to just 10 minutes of light at night suppresses biting and manipulates flight behavior in the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, the major vector for transmission ...

An international team of scientists has identified several genetic mutations that, should they arise, could potentially allow the avian influenza strain H7N9 to spread between humans. The findings are published in PLOS Pathogens.

A plant found throughout Southeast Asia traditionally used to treat arthritis and rheumatism contains a potent anti-HIV compound more powerful than the drug AZT, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Natural ...

Each year, invasive fungal infections sicken an estimated 2 million people worldwide and kill nearly 800,000 - but a team of international scientists have discovered a new approach for antifungal drug treatments.

Cryptococcus, a type of fungi found worldwide that is responsible annually for upwards of 625,000 deaths, was likely originally spread across the globe in conjunction with continental drift, according to a report by the Translational ...

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common infections, and they tend to come back again and again, even when treated. Most UTIs are caused by E. coli that live in the gut and spread to the urinary tract.

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Read more:
Study casts doubt about link between eczema, cardiovascular disease - Medical Xpress