Early childhood hospitalisation with infection and subclinical atherosclerosis in adulthood: The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study

Infectious diseases are associated with carotid intima media thickness in adolescence

“…In the same study treatment with antibiotics reduced the observed carotid thickening. Our results are in line with these earlier observations and the very recently published analyses by the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study [41]. They found a longitudinal impact of childhood hospitalization due to an inflammatory disease on adult vascular parameters.…”

“…The use of the continuous variable indicates an increase of risk with each added new infectious disease, while the categorization of the score suggests a cutoff level with a significantly increased risk at !3 different infectious diseases. As suggested by Burgner et al, children who acquire severe or in our case many different infectious diseases might have an exaggerated immune response to common pathogens [41]. The immunological (over-)reaction may lead to an increased systemic inflammation and vascular damage.…”

Childhood Infections, Socioeconomic Status, and Adult Cardiometabolic Risk

“…Low SES potentiates the effects of cardiovascular stress responses on the progression of carotid atherosclerosis, 26 and our results support the view that changes in vascular function, evidenced through brachial FMD, occur before evident vascular structural changes in IMT. 15 In additional analyses we demonstrate that vascular changes are unlikely to be mediated by obesity alone, because adjustment for adult BMI did not alter the interaction…”

“…16,20 We selected infectionrelated ICD codes (ICD versions 9 and 10) a priori, based on a modification of published population-based epidemiologic studies of childhood IRH. 15 To investigate possible infection-specific effects, we grouped infection-related codes a priori into clinical diagnostic categories by using a modification of methods described previously. 20 Early childhood was defined as birth to 5 years of age, when the infection burden is greatest.…”

“…15,16 Here we prospectively investigated the interaction between childhood SES and early life (age 0-5 years) infections on cardiometabolic risk markers in adulthood (age 30-36 years) among 1015 people in the longitudinal Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study.…”