Differential Associations of Chronic Inflammatory Diseases With Incident Heart Failure

The purpose of this study was to compare the risks of incident heart failure (HF) among a variety of chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs) and to determine whether risks varied by severity of inflammation within each CID. Individuals with CIDs are at elevated risk for cardiovascular diseases, but data are limited regarding risk for HF. An electronic health records database from a large urban medical system was examined, comparing individuals with CIDs with frequency-matched controls without CIDs, all of whom were receiving regular outpatient care. Rates of incident HF were determined by using the Kaplan-Meier method and subsequently used multivariate-adjusted proportional hazards models to compare HF risks for each CID. Exploratory analyses determined HF risks by proxy measurement of CID severity. Of 37,636 patients (n = 18,278 patients with CIDs; and n = 19,358 controls without CIDs) there were 960 incident HF cases over a median of 3.6 years. Risks for incident HF were significantly or borderline significantly elevated for patients with systemic sclerosis (hazard ratio [HR]: 7.26; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 5.72 to 9.21; p