Childhood adversity increases risk of cardiovascular disease

Health

Childhood adversity increases risk of cardiovascular disease

Published

1 year ago

November 25, 2022

Harry Miller

Childhood adversity increases risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a recent study.

CVD is currently the main cause of death worldwide, with rates of CVD in young adults rising over time. Genetic factors have been associated with CVD, but investigators hypothesized that environmental and behavioral factors also impact CVD risk.

Adversity has been linked to CVD in middle-aged and older individuals, but little data has been gathered on the effects of childhood adversity on CVD in young adults. Multiple internal systems develop throughout childhood, including physiological stress response. The development of this system could be affected by frequent exposure to adversity.

Overeating, excessive alcohol consumption, and smoking are all behaviors associated with CVD, and childhood adversity has been linked with higher risk of these behaviors. However, the effects of childhood adversity on congenital aetiology are still unclear.

To examine the impact of childhood adversity on CVD in individuals aged 16 to 38 years with a focus on ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and cerebrovascular disease (CD), investigators conducted a population-based cohort study. Data was gathered from the DANish LIFE coursecohort, containing information from multiple registers nationwide.

Information on childhood adversities, morbidity, and mortality of children born from January 1, 1980, to December 31, 2001, was taken for the study. Participants were alive and residing in Denmark until their 16th birthday without a CVD or congenital heart disease diagnosis. The final study population included 1,263,013 individuals.

Cadversities were divided into 3 categories: loss or threat of loss in the family, family dynamics, and material deprivation. Family poverty and parental long-term unemployment were cases of material deprivation, while parent and sibling somatic illness and death was loss or threat of loss in the family.

Family dynamics included: parental alcohol and drug abuse, foster care placements, parental and sibling psychiatric illness, and maternal separation.

CVD as cases of IHD or CD was the primary outcome. Covariates included year of birth, paternal age at birth, parental country of origin, and parental cardiometabolic illness. Adjustments were made for the effects of being small for gestational age at birth and parental education at time of birth.

The mean follow-up period for participants was 10.8 years after their 16th birthday. During this follow-up period, 4118 participants developed CVD, 966 of which developed IHD and 3152 CD. There were 5178 deaths from a cause other than CVD, and 96,812 emigrations from the study prior to the follow-up.

Participants were more likely to face adversity if they were born to teenage mothers, with persistent deprivation risk high among this group. Material deprivation was also common in children born to parents of a non-Western origin.

Parental cardiometabolic illness in was seen in 24% of participants with material deprivation, 36% with loss or threat of loss, 39% with high adversity, and 21% with low adversity. Low parental education was seen in 8% of participants in the low adversity group and 54% of the high adversity group, and small for gestational age was seen in 11% of the low adversity group and 22% of the high adversity group.

Individuals with high adversity had an increased risk of developing CVD, with 10 to 18 extra cases per 100,000 people. Men and women in the loss or threat of loss group had 15.6 and 9.7 more CVD cases per 100,000 people respectively. Individuals early in life or having experienced material deprivation were also more likely to develop CVD, but the risk was only modestly higher than average.

As high childhood adversity led to the greatest risk of CVD, investigators recommended that efforts toward providing affected families with support could reduce the rate of long-term cardio-protective effects.

Reference

Bengtsson J, Elsenburg LK, Stig Andersen G, Lytken Larsen M, Rieckmann A, Hulvej Rod N, Childhood adversity and cardiovascular disease in early adulthood: a Danish cohort study. European Heart Journal. 2022. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehac607

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Health

Interior Health delivers nearly 800K immunization doses in 2023

Published

53 mins ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

Interior Health says it delivered nearly 800,000 immunization doses last year — a number almost equal to the region’s population.

The released figure of 784,980 comes during National Immunization Awareness Week, which runs April 22-30.

The health care organization, which serves a large area of around 820,000, says it’s using the occasion to boost vaccine rates even though there may be post-pandemic vaccine fatigue.

“This is a very important initiative because it ensures that communicable diseases stay away from a region,” said Dr. Silvina Mema of Interior Health.

However, not all those doses were for COVID; the tally includes childhood immunizations plus immunizations for adults.

But IHA said immunizations are down from the height of the pandemic, when COVID vaccines were rolled out, though it seems to be on par with previous pre-pandemic years.

Interior Health says it’d like to see the overall immunization rate rise.

“Certainly there are some folks who have decided a vaccine is not for them. And they have their reasons,” said Jonathan Spence, manager of communicable disease prevention and control at Interior Health.

“I think there’s a lot of people who are hesitant, but that’s just simply because they have questions.

“And that’s actually part of what we’re celebrating this week is those public health nurses, those pharmacists, who can answer questions and answer questions with really good information around immunization.”

Mima echoed that sentiment.

“We take immunization very seriously. It’s a science-based program that has saved countless lives across the world and eliminated diseases that were before a threat and now we don’t see them anymore,” she said.

“So immunization is very important.”

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Health

Remnants of bird flu virus found in pasteurized milk, FDA says

Published

2 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk had tested positive for remnants of the bird flu virus that has infected dairy cows.

The agency stressed that the material is inactivated and that the findings “do not represent actual virus that may be a risk to consumers.” Officials added that they’re continuing to study the issue.

“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in a statement.

The announcement comes nearly a month after an avian influenza virus that has sickened millions of wild and commercial birds in recent years was detected in dairy cows in at least eight states. The Agriculture Department says 33 herds have been affected to date.

FDA officials didn’t indicate how many samples they tested or where they were obtained. The agency has been evaluating milk during processing and from grocery stores, officials said. Results of additional tests are expected in “the next few days to weeks.”

The PCR lab test the FDA used would have detected viral genetic material even after live virus was killed by pasteurization, or heat treatment, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University

“There is no evidence to date that this is infectious virus and the FDA is following up on that,” Jaykus said.

Officials with the FDA and the USDA had previously said milk from affected cattle did not enter the commercial supply. Milk from sick animals is supposed to be diverted and destroyed. Federal regulations require milk that enters interstate commerce to be pasteurized.

Because the detection of the bird flu virus known as Type A H5N1 in dairy cattle is new and the situation is evolving, no studies on the effects of pasteurization on the virus have been completed, FDA officials said. But past research shows that pasteurization is “very likely” to inactivate heat-sensitive viruses like H5N1, the agency added.

Matt Herrick, a spokesman for the International Dairy Foods Association, said that time and temperature regulations for pasteurization ensure that the commercial U.S. milk supply is safe. Remnants of the virus “have zero impact on human health,” he wrote in an email.

Scientists confirmed the H5N1 virus in dairy cows in March after weeks of reports that cows in Texas were suffering from a mysterious malady. The cows were lethargic and saw a dramatic reduction in milk production. Although the H5N1 virus is lethal to commercial poultry, most infected cattle seem to recover within two weeks, experts said.

To date, two people in U.S. have been infected with bird flu. A Texas dairy worker who was in close contact with an infected cow recently developed a mild eye infection and has recovered. In 2022, a prison inmate in a work program caught it while killing infected birds at a Colorado poultry farm. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Canada Falling Short in Adult Vaccination Rates – VOCM

Published

4 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Harry Miller

Canada is about where it should be when it comes to childhood vaccines, but for adult vaccinations it’s a different story.

Dr. Vivien Brown of Immunize Canada says the overall population should have rates of between 80 and 90 per cent for most vaccines, but that is not the case.

She says most children are in that range but not for adult vaccines and ultimately the most at-risk populations are not being reached.

She says the population is under immunized for conditions such as pneumonia, shingles, tetanus, and pertussis.

Brown wants people to talk with their family physician or pharmacist to see if they are up-to-date on vaccines, and to get caught up because many are “killer diseases.”

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