Looking for heart disease? The eyes have it

	Tweet

The eyes may carry important early clues to heart disease, signaling damage to tiny blood vessels long before symptoms start to show elsewhere, researchers reported on Tuesday.

People with a type of eye damage known as retinopathy were more likely to die of heart disease over the next 12 years than those without it, according to the team at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne in Australia and the National University of Singapore.

They studied the retinal photographs of 3,000 people, most of whom had diabetes. Such snapshots are often taken to see if the diabetes has begun to damage the eyes. Then they checked records for deaths.

"Over 12 years, 353 participants (11.9 percent) had incident coronary heart disease-related deaths,” the researchers reported in the journal Heart.

People with retinopathy were nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease as people without it, said the team, led by the University of Sydney’s Gerald Liew.

Retinopathy raised the risk of heart disease as much as diabetes did, they found. Diabetes is a well known risk factor for heart disease, the leading cause of death in most industrialized nations and many developing ones.

People with these changes may be getting a first warning that damage is occurring in their arteries, and work to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, the researchers said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters)

RELATED STORIES:
Scientists turn skin cells into beating heart muscle   Too many people get angioplasties, study suggests   New Blood Thinner May Lower Chances of Clots in High-Risk Heart Patients: FDA   Heart Damage After Chemo Linked to Stress in Cardiac Cells   What’s good or bad for the heart, may be the same for the brain   Warfarin in Heart Failure   Increased Sudden Cardiac Death Rate Among HIV Patients   Air pollution level changes in Beijing linked with biomarkers of cardiovascular disease   Lack of basic evidence hampering prevention of sudden heart attacks in sport   Blacks Less Likely to Get Help on Scene After Cardiac Arrest: Study   Heart attack patients taken to PCI hospitals first treated faster   Cameron Health’s under-skin ICD safe, effective

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]