Heart failure (HF) is associated with an increased rate of cancer in post-menopausal women, according to new research presented at the ACC.20 World Congress of Cardiology.
“There is conflicting evidence whether heart failure (HF) is associated with incident cancer,” the research authors wrote in their abstract. “Despite population-based cohorts demonstrating this association, no association was found in the Physician’s Health Study. We aimed to study this in women.”
In this cohort study, researchers enrolled 146,817 women free of HF or cancer and observed them over an average of 8.4 years. Heart failure adjudication was modeled as time-varying exposure, and the study’s primary endpoint was defined as adjudicated cancer. The researchers developed Cox models for any cancer, obesity-related, tobacco-related, and site-specific cancer.
According to the results, 3,272 participants developed HF and 17,474 developed cancer; of those, 235 developed HF before cancer. The researchers observed that HF was linked to a higher incidence of cancer (HR=1.46; 95% CI, 1.29 to 1.66) after adjusting for several confounders, such as screening. The researchers noted that these correlations were observed for both obesity-and tobacco-related cancers, as well as lung and colorectal cancer. The results also showed that heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) was associated with cancer (HR=1.39; 95% CI, 1.10 to 1.75), while reduced ejection fraction (HfrEF) was not (HR=1.04; 95% CI, 0.78 to 1.39).
The researchers concluded that the association between HF and incident cancer in post-menopausal women “persists across multiple cancer sites and is more pronounced in HfpEF.”
Leedy D. The Association Between Heart Failure and Incident Cancer in Women: An Analysis of the Women’s Health Initiative. Presented at the ACC.20 World Congress of Cardiology; March 28-30, Chicago, IL.