LOS ANGELES -- Some of the hallmarks of "old age" -- baldness or fat deposits on the eyelids -- may be markers for increased risk of ischemic heart disease.
In a Danish cohort study patients' risk of myocardial infarction grew by 35% if they had fatty eyelid deposits, 11% if they had earlobe creases, and 40% for men with crown top baldness, Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen, MD, reported at the American Heart Association meeting.
Patients who presented three or four aging signs had a nearly 40% increased risk of ischemic heart disease (HR 1.39, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.61) and a nearly 60% increased risk of MI (HR 1.57, 95% CI 1.28 to 1.93), said Tybjaerg-Hansen, of the Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.
"Looking old for your age is a marker of poor cardiovascular health," she noted during the presentation, adding that patients presenting these signs of old age should engage in lifestyle change and that use of lipid-lowering therapy "should be intensified in these individuals."
Session moderator Kathy Magliato, MD, of St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif., noted that healthcare professionals need to visually inspect their patients.
"We need to really look at them," she said, adding that "I think doctors are sometimes so rushed to put on a blood pressure cuff and get a stethoscope on your chest that sometimes we forget to sit back and look at these visible signs of aging."
Tybjaerg-Hansen and colleagues analyzed aging signs in 10,885 participants, ages 40 and older, sampled from the general Danish population and followed for 35 years until the development of ischemic heart disease or MI. A majority of the sample were men (55%).
At baseline, participants were checked for visual signs of aging, including baldness, greying hair, wrinkles, earlobe creasing, fatty deposits around the eyelid (xanthelasmata), and lightening of the cornea. Prevalence of these conditions included:
- 69% had frontoparietal baldness
- 36% had crown top baldness
- 31% had earlobe crease
- 6% had fatty eyelid deposits
However, she noted that risks grew significantly the more symptoms a patient presented (P<0.0001), with a greater than 50% increased risk among patients with three or four aging signs, and independent of other cardiovascular risk factors.
These factors "reflect your biological age" rather than one's chronological age and were a good marker of poor cardiovascular health, she said.
She noted that the study was made up entirely of white Danish individuals and that its results may not be generalizable to other populations.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Primary source: American Heart Association
Source reference:
Tybjaerg-Hansen A, et al "Aging signs predict risk of ischemic vascular disease independent of chronological age" AHA 2012; Abstract 15333.
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