A build up of plaque in the arteries not only puts people at risk for heart and vascular disease but makes them vulnerable to cancer, kidney, and lung diseases.

A 10-year follow-up study of more than 6,000 people who underwent heart CT scans showed that a high coronary artery calcium score (CAC) is the result of cumulative damage and inflammation. This contributes to diseases such as cancer, chronic kidney disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

“Doctors need to encourage their patients to adopt healthy lifestyle habits as early in life as possible, to prevent the build of vessel damage which is characterized by lifetime exposure to cardiovascular risk,” Dr. Michael Blaha, director of clinical research for the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease and assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told HCB News.
Blaha is also is one of the many authors of the study, which was published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging.

“Doctors, payers, accountable care organizations (ACOs) and policy makers need to be aware that patients with high CAC scores are likely to be consumers of health care resources,” Blaha said. “It is becoming increasingly accepted that CAC scores are a sign of accumulated damage to the blood vessels, and as such are a sign of 'arterial aging'. This places patients at risk for a variety of age-related chronic diseases.”

He said that the researchers were not surprised that CAC scores had some association with these other non-cardiovascular chronic diseases. The risk of these diseases is low when someone’s calcium score is zero, and that risk skyrockets nearly fivefold when the score is above 400.

“However, we were surprised how strong these associations remained after closely adjusting for age, socioeconomic status, risk factors and a measure of comorbidity burden. This suggests that CAC is telling us much about a patient's risks and vulnerability to vessel damage that we can gather through measurement of the usual risk factors,” Blaha said.

This information points to the value of imaging of sub-clinical disease as a sign of risk of a variety of diseases. Patients with high CAC scores are likely to be increased users of health care resources. On the other hand, those with persistent zero calcium scores have a lower risk of chronic disease and appear to be a group of "healthy agers,” he added.

“We need to do many studies to learn more about the determinants of healthy aging — such as genetics and lifestyle traits — so we can encourage early prevention,” he said. “The key message is to engage in preventive measures early in life to avoid having high CAC scores. A key message of this paper is that imaging of sub-clinical vascular disease has value beyond cardiovascular disease, suggesting that directly looking at the aging process may offer a glimpse into the future health of patients.”

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