2024-01-16 14:35:38
Poverty and inflammation, it turns out to be a deadly combination. According to new American research, this doubles the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, while the chance of dying from cancer even triples.
One and one makes three when it comes to chronic inflammation and poverty. Both factors individually are known to increase the risk of death, but together they are worse than the sum of their parts. This is the conclusion of researchers from the University of Florida based on data from more than 95 million Americans aged 40 and older.
Double whammy
“There is already a lot of evidence that chronic inflammation can cause disease,” said lead researcher Arch Mainous III. “But we wanted to know more about the potential interaction of this inflammation and poverty, which in itself can worsen inflammation levels through, for example, chronic stress.” The conclusions are quite shocking. “We found that poverty and high levels of inflammation work synergistically. People who suffer from both get a double blow. It makes it much more likely that they will die and within a relatively short period of just fifteen years.”
The CRP value
Chronic inflammation is a somewhat vague term. We can all imagine something about acute inflammation. Think of a throat or pneumonia that will clear up within a few weeks, but a chronic inflammation is different. It is a long-term, persistent inflammatory response of the body, which can last for months or sometimes years. It increases the risk of all kinds of diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and kidney disease. An elevated CRP value in the blood indicates chronic inflammation. CRP stands for C-reactive protein and is a protein produced by the liver during inflammation.
According to another study by Mainous, as many as 35 percent of American adults suffer from systemic inflammation, as it is also called. This type of inflammation is often caused by lifestyle factors, such as unhealthy eating, stress, little exercise, smoking, obesity and exposure to chemicals in the environment.
Time for screening
So it seems to be a cause of death that can be avoided. Reason for the researchers to argue for screening for chronic inflammation in vulnerable population groups. “Researchers have been studying chronic inflammation for 25 years and we have a lot of data on its role in disease and mortality,” says Mainous. “We know it’s a problem, but we don’t do anything about it. We therefore urgently need to translate basic knowledge about chronic inflammation into doctors’ practices by developing screening guidelines so that doctors can recognize chronic inflammation in patients and work on treating the underlying causes.”
Millions of Americans examined
The professor from Florida arrived at his findings using data from a large long-term study among tens of millions of Americans, combining questionnaires with laboratory research. It looked at adults aged 40 and older, whose incomes were below the US poverty line and whose lab tests showed elevated CRP levels, an indicator of chronic inflammation. The data is linked to mortality rates over a fifteen-year period.
People who lived below the poverty line and suffered from chronic inflammation had a 127 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease and an almost 200 percent greater risk of dying from cancer. People who either had chronic inflammation or were poor, but not both, had a 50 percent greater risk of death in the fifteen years studied. “It is time to not only identify the health problems that can cause inflammation, but also to solve the problems,” Mainous said. In other words: after screening people, it is time to help them live healthier lives so that inflammation levels can decrease.
#Time #start #screening