High pollution increases the risk of repeated heart attacks in cardiac patients by over 40 percent, a Tel Aviv University researcher has claimed.
Air pollution, which posed a serious danger to the environment, is also a major health risk, associated with respiratory infections, lung cancer and heart disease.
The researcher has concluded that not only does air pollution impact cardiac events such as heart attack and stroke, but it also causes repeated episodes over the long term.
Cardiac patients living in high pollution areas were found to be over 40 percent more likely to have a second heart attack when compared to patients living in low pollution areas, according to Dr. Yariv Gerber of TAU’s School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine.
“We know that like smoking cigarettes, pollution itself provokes the inflammatory system. If you are talking about long-term exposure and an inflammatory system that is irritated chronically, pollution may well be involved in the progression of atrial sclerosis that manifests in cardiac events,” Dr. Gerber said.
Done in collaboration with Prof. Yaacov Drory and funded by the Environmental and Health Fund in Jerusalem, the research was presented at the San Diego Epidemiological Meeting of the American Heart Association in March and the Annual Meeting of the Israeli Heart Society in April.
The goal of this study, Dr. Gerber said, was to quantify that association and determine the long-term effects of air pollution on myocardial infarction (MI) patients.
Their study followed 1,120 first-time MI patients who had been admitted to one of eight hospitals in central Israel between 1992 and 1993, all of whom were under the age of 65 at the time of admittance.
–Agencies