Are you a guy with ankylosing spondylitis (AS)?
Then you need to know about this study. It suggests that men with AS are at a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular causes compared to people without AS.
The study, conducted in Ontario, Canada and published in The Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at the records of 21,473 patients with AS aged 15 years or older, compared to a control population of 86,606 people without AS.
Researchers analyzed years of patients’ data (a combined 166,920 patient-years for AS patients and 686,461 patient-years for the control group) while omitting and adjusting various factors that could skew the results—such as diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases and medications. The study found that in the AS population, the vascular mortality rate was 1.02 per 1000 person-years, compared to 0.87 per 1000 person-years for the control group. And when adjusted by gender, the increase in vascular mortality was only seen in men with AS.
All of this makes sense in a way—very little that happens in the body happens in isolation. So something like a chronic inflammatory arthritic disease affecting the spine is going to have an impact on the rest of the body.
Don’t hit the panic button yet, though. Knowing the risk means you and your healthcare team can start monitoring the situation and managing the risk.
The study suggested that more work needs to be done to develop prevention strategies, but there’s nothing stopping you from talking to your doctor about the risk now. So… step away from the computer, see your doctor, and start talking!
Featured image courtesy of clinicalcorrelations.org
