Patients with obstructive airway disease have increased risk of comorbid CVD development: Study

A new study published in the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease showed that regardless of phenotype, people with obstructive airway disease (OAD) are more likely to have concomitant cardiovascular disease (CVD) and to develop CVD, particularly if they also have asthma-COPD overlap (ACO).

Two of the most common obstructive airway disorders (OAD) are asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which affected over 262 million and 212.3 million individuals in 2019, respectively. Few studies have compared the amount of CVD risk across various OAD phenotypes within a single study, and inconsistent results and a lack of geographic variety in the population are limitations of the existing research. There is, however, no solid evidence linking the risk of CVD to other obstructive airway disease phenotypes, such as asthma and asthma-COPD overlap. Therefore, Meng and team conducted this study to examine the extent of CVD risk across various OAD phenotypes.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (N=44,972, or 183,508,900 individuals) provided the cross-sectional data that was examined for this work. The prevalence of CVD (including heart failure, angina pectoris, coronary heart disease, and myocardial infarction) among OAD phenotypes was examined using survey-weighted descriptive analysis and logistic regression. Furthermore, these results were confirmed by analyzing longitudinal data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) (N=13,533) and using Cox proportional hazards models to compute hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% CIs for new-onset CVD.

Asthma, COPD, and ACO had weighted prevalences of at least one CVD of 6.21%, 16.82%, and 20.75%, respectively. The prevalence of CVD was considerably greater in people with asthma, COPD, and ACO than in people without OAD (ORs of 1.55, 1.76, and 2.99, respectively).

In CHARLS, 2,444 people (18.1%) got CVD during the course of the 9-year follow-up. When compared to people without OAD, those with asthma, COPD, and ACO had a considerably greater risk of CVD.

Overall, this study revealed that people with OAD are linked to an elevated risk of CVD regardless of their phenotype. When compared to individuals with asthma or COPD, those with ACO showed the highest correlation with CVD among OAD patients. The significance of awareness and proper cardiovascular screening in OAD is highlighted by these findings.

Reference:

Meng, K., Zhang, X., & Dai, H. (2025). Obstructive airway disease is associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk independent of phenotype: Evidence from two nationwide population-based studies. International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, 20, 1435–1446. https://doi.org/10.2147/copd.s522367