Lupus Causes Heart Problems in Younger Black Women

There are significant race-related differences in the age of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients at the time of hospital admission for cardiovascular disease (CVD) events and CVD-related death, as black women with SLE develop cardiovascular disease earlier in life, a new study finds.

Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine found that the youngest women to be admitted with CVD and to have an in-hospital death due to CVD, were black women.

For the survey, scientists used data from the Health Care Utilization Project (HCUP) Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, on all over-18 years old patients recorded between 2003 and 2006.

After keeping only the records that had complete demographic information, Lisabeth Scalzi, MD, MS, and colleagues identified 90,444 hospitalizations for SLE patients and 19 million for non-SLE patients, out of which 89% among those with SLE were women unlike 61% for the non-SLE individuals.

In the SLE group there individuals were 55% white, 28% black, 12% Hispanic, 2% Asian, and 3% other.

According to the records, there were 3,627 admissions for acute CVD among female SLE patients of an average age of 60.8 years, while for the CVD-admitted women without SLE, the mean age was of 71.3 years.

Among the women that experienced a CVD event, the youngest were black women: 53.9 years for those with SLE and 65.8 for those without the illness.

“In female SLE patients, we found a 9.6 year difference in age difference at time of hospitalization for CVD between black patients and white patients (mean age-63.5 years),” Dr. Scalzi explained.

This study was also the first to compare age at the time of CVD and CVD-related decease in men with SLE to those without it.

805 male SLE patients were admitted because of a CVD event, and black and Hispanic men were the youngest.

After processing the data, results show that men with SLE were 5.5 years younger than men without SLE at the time of admission for CVD and they were also 11 years younger at the time of in-hospital death due to CVD.

Also, for 218 women with SLE, in-hospital death was attributed to a CVD event and black women were also youngest (mean age of 52.8 years) at the time of death unlike other racial groups (mean ages for white-67.1 years; Hispanic-62 years; Asian 63.8 years).

“More than half of the black women with SLE who died of CVD were younger than 55 years of age,” said Dr. Scalzi.

“Most startling was the vast age difference between patients with SLE and their age-matched controls at the time of CVD-related death: black women with SLE were almost 20 years younger than black women without SLE (52.8 versus 72.6 years of age).”

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease where healthy cells are attacked by the body’s own immune system and this causes inflammation, extreme fatigue, joint pain and organ damage.

Data from the Lupus Foundation of America, near 1.5 million Americans in the United States have some form of lupus, and almost 70% of all cases are SLE, AlphaGalileo reports.

The authors of the study suggest that the common risk factors for CVD like smoking, obesity and high cholesterol, should be eliminated, especially for women suffering from SLE, and even more if they are black of Hispanic.

“Studies in ethnically diverse lupus populations are warranted to examine the success in addressing risk factor management and barriers that may hamper effective management efforts, and prescription habits, adherence to prescribed therapy, awareness of heart attack warning signs, and appropriate management of acute CVD events should also be examined for any racial disparities,” concluded Dr. Scalzi.

The results of the study are published in the September issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a Wiley-Blackwell journal on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology.