The Journal of the American Heart Association published a new study of around 600,000 adults in the US which showed that people with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia may have a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease at younger ages compared to adults not having any of these mental illnesses.

The study noted that about 11,000 adults (2%) were suffering from some serious mental illness. Of these, 70% had bipolar disorder, 18% had schizoaffective disorder and 12% had schizophrenia. Prediction models providing a standardized metric helped evaluate cardiovascular risk factors and predict the odds of a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death. Researchers used the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association’s atherosclerotic cardiovascular risk scoring tool to evaluate the 10-year risk for adults aged 40-75 years. The Framingham Risk Score was used to determine 30-year cardiovascular risk for adults aged 18-59 years.

An estimated 10-year cardiovascular risk level of 9.5% was observed among adults who had any one of the serious mental illnesses, which was higher compared to 8% for adults without any mental illness. The estimated 30-year risk of cardiovascular disease was25 % in those with either of the three mental illnesses compared to 11% in people without a serious mental illness. Also, the risk of heart disease was more in young adults (ages 18-34) with a serious mental illness. It was further observed that the 10-year cardiovascular risk was maximum among people with bipolar disorder, compared to those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, while the 30-year cardiovascular risk was highest for people with the schizoaffective disorder compared to the other two mental illnesses. (ET Healthworld - ANI, March 10, 2022)