Risk factors of atherosclerosis and clinical and morphological comparisons in systemic vasculitides

Objective: to study the incidence rates of angina, myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, and the frequency of endovascular interventions in patients with systemic vasculitides, and the incidence rate of atherosclerosis according to autopsy data. Subjects and methods. Three hundred and twenty-one patients with systemic vasculitides: Wegener's granulomatosis (n = 138), Takayasu's arteritis (n = 79), polyarteritis nodosum (n = 55), and Churg-Strauss syndrome (n = 49) were examined; 55 autopsies were analyzed in patients with the above diseases. Results. Fifty-one (15.6%) of the 321 patients were diagnosed as having cardiovascular diseases (CVD): angina pectoris (7.1%) and MI (3.1%) and endovascular interventions (0.9%). The risk of cardiovascular events was found to be associated with traditional risk factors, such as male gender and age. Arterial hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia, and increased serum creatinine were more frequently detected in the CVD group that showed no significant differences from the non-CVD group. According to autopsy results, atherosclerosis was identified in the patients with Wegener's granulomatosis (52%), Takayasu's arteritis (50%), polyarteritis nodosum (52.6%), and Churg-Strauss syndrome (57.1%). Conclusion. CVD and atherosclerosis are common in systemic vasculitides, which requires the traditional risk factors of atherosclerosis to be actively corrected.