Researchers found a major link between heart health and impairment

People with a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease are significantly more likely to develop carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, and rotator cuff tendinitis, according to a new study involving researchers at the University of Utah and the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. .

The research findings, published June 2 in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicinehas implications for the prevention and treatment of this common musculoskeletal disorder, which affects tens of millions of Americans each year and results in annual costs of more than $6 billion.

The study’s lead author is Kurt Hegmann, MD, a University of Utah professor and director of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational Health and the Environment, a partnership between the University of Utah and Weber State University. He said the strength of the associations the researchers found between risk factors for cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal disorders was surprising.

“Rarely do you see a 17-fold risk of disease,” says Hegmann. “These results tell us that prioritizing cardiovascular health is key to preventing these musculoskeletal disorders, which can have a devastating impact on people’s quality of life. This is something that we and other researchers and medical professionals need to pay a lot of attention to.”

The authors based their research on data from a nine-year prospective cohort of 1,224 workers in various occupational sectors in three states. Baseline data were collected at the start of the study, including from interviews, physical examination, anthropometric measurements, and nerve conduction studies, with monthly follow-ups to track the progress of symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders. The authors compared the development of musculoskeletal disorders with the risk of cardiovascular disease using a method based on the Framingham Heart Study model, a widely used tool to assess a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease over 10 years. They adjusted their analysis for a number of factors that could distort the results, such as body mass index and the physical stress of the participants’ work.

The findings suggest that poor cardiovascular health contributes to the development of musculoskeletal disorders. Participants with a risk of cardiovascular disease of 15% or higher are:

• at four times greater risk of developing one or more musculoskeletal disorders than those at low risk of developing cardiovascular disease
• at 17 times greater risk of developing four or more musculoskeletal disorders than those at low risk of cardiovascular disease

“The importance of heart health is definitely no secret,” says Matthew Thiese, PhD, co-author of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. “We know that people need to adopt healthy behaviors so that they don’t get diseases that can shorten their lives. But this research shows that adverse outcomes related to musculoskeletal disorders may also await people who are not taking care of their heart health.”

The musculoskeletal disorders that the researchers examined are common among Americans and can impair a person’s quality of life. Previous research has estimated that up to 5% of the population has carpal tunnel syndrome, for example, with a much higher prevalence among workers whose jobs require vigorous movement, while up to 41% of people have tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis. Up to one third of people have a rotator cuff tear.

According to the authors, this study raises questions about whether such a condition is a potential “early warning” signal for cardiovascular disease. Musculoskeletal disorders can occur in someone with poor heart health years or decades before symptoms of cardiovascular disease appear.

These findings are in line with growing evidence that systemic risk factors contribute to the development of musculoskeletal disorders. Study limitations include that this study was not a randomized controlled trial. Randomized studies are the gold standard in proving causality, even though this type of exposure cannot be randomized.

Other co-authors associated with the University of Utah include Eric Wood, MD, and Richard Kendall, MD. They conducted the study in collaboration with researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Infinity Healthcare in Wisconsin, and the Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Wisconsin.

About the University of Utah Health

University of Utah Health provides leading and compassionate care to a referral area that includes Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and most of Nevada. The region’s health sciences research and education center, U of U Health has a $458 million research firm and trains most of Utah’s physicians, and more than 1,670 scientists and 1,460 healthcare providers in its Colleges of Health, Nursing, and Pharmacy and the School of Dentistry. and Medicine. With more than 20,000 employees, the system includes 12 community clinics and five hospitals. U of U Health is nationally recognized as a transformative healthcare system and world-class care provider.