Pneumonia may raise risk of sudden heart trouble

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who are hospitalized with bacterial pneumonia are nearly eight times more likely to suffer heart attack or other "acute coronary syndrome" within 15 days of admission than are their peers hospitalized for other conditions, new research suggests.

Moreover, the results indicate that individuals with bacterial pneumonia are at much greater risk for acute heart-related "events" in the days following admission than they are 1 year before or after hospitalization.

Dr. Vicente F. Corrales-Medina from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston presented his team's findings this week at the combined annual meeting of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) in Washington, DC.

The study focused on 206 "case" patients who were hospitalized with pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae or Haemophilus influenzae, the most commonly implicated bacterial pathogens, and 395 non-pneumonia "controls" hospitalized for other conditions.

Compared to control patients, pneumonia patients had 7.75-fold higher risk of suffering an acute heart-related event within 15 days of being admitted to the hospital. Overall, 10.7 percent of pneumonia patients suffered an acute coronary event within 15 days of hospital admission, compared with only 1.5 percent of control patients.

Further analysis showed that pneumonia patients were roughly 45-times more likely to experience an acute coronary syndrome in the days following their admission than either 1 year before or after their hospital stay.

The researchers say additional studies are needed to understand the molecular basis of the association.