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Heart Attacks More Likely For People With High Blood Pressure In Cold Weather
Heart Attacks More Likely For People With High Blood Pressure In Cold Weather -- Posted by Gumbo on 11-01-04 17:26
Heart Attacks More Likely For People With High Blood Pressure In Cold
Weather
August 30, 2004
MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- People with high blood pressure seem to be more
vulnerable to heart attacks when the temperature drops, new research shows.
The findings, presented Monday at a conference of the European Society of
Cardiology, are not surprising because cold weather makes the blood vessels
constrict, making it harder for blood to move through, but the study is the
first to document that variations in the weather increase the occurrence of
heart attacks in people with high blood pressure.
The two-year study, conducted by scientists at the University of Burgundy in
France, examined 748 people admitted to local hospitals with a heart attack.
The researchers matched the hospital admission with weather information
covering the same period.
Of those in the study, 50 percent were being treated for high blood pressure
or had at some time suffered from the condition.
Overall, heart attacks were more frequent when the temperature dropped below
4 degrees celsius (39.2 degrees Fahrenheit). However, a closer analysis
revealed that this was only true for people who had high blood pressure.
There were double the number of heart attacks among these people when the
temperature dropped below the threshold.
Heart attacks also went up in hypertensive people when the temperature
dropped by more than 5 degrees celsius on the day of their attack,
regardless of how cold it was.
Blood pressure rises when it gets colder because the blood vessels narrow to
preserve body heat. The hypertensive starts at a higher blood pressure than
healthy people and ends up with an even higher blood pressure when the
weather turns. Higher blood pressure is more strenuous for the heart.
The study highlights the special vulnerability that people with high blood
pressure have to cold weather and underlines the importance of getting their
blood pressure down to normal levels, said Dr. David Faxon, chief of
cardiology at the University of Chicago in the United States and a former
president of the American Heart Association.
Barometric pressure, or air pressure, was also an important influence on
heart attack in people with high blood pressure, the study found, but not in
those with normal blood pressure. A shift of more than 8 points triggered an
attack, the investigators found.
"A peak in (heart attack) onset in this population was observed at the
passage of a cold front, but not a warm one," the study found.
How the weather is linked to heart attacks is unclear, but several theories
exist. One is that the inflammation caused by winter respiratory infections
could make the blood vessels more vulnerable. Another is simply that the
extra narrowing of the blood vessels is enough to trigger a heart attack.
"This makes sense because when you get chilly weather, the blood pressure
increases," said Dr. Lars Ryden, professor of Cardiology at the Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who was not connected with the study. "It
happens in everyone but people with hypertension are particularly sensitive.
The reason people get hypertension is that they have over reactive blood
vessels and if the blood vessels contract in a hypertensive patient, you get
an even more narrow vessel than if they contract in a normal patient."
The best protection, Ryden said, is to dress warmly when going out in the
cold.
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