MONDAY, June 11, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Erectile dysfunction (ED) is independently associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a research letter published online June 11 in Circulation.
S.M. Iftekhar Uddin, M.B.B.S., M.S.P.H., from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues leveraged the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis to examine the value of self-reported ED for predicting incident coronary heart disease (CHD) and CVD. A total of 1,914 male participants were considered for the analysis; 1,757 participants were followed for 3.8 years.
The researchers found that 45.8 percent of participants had ED symptoms. Participants with ED were more likely to have diabetes mellitus; a family history of CHD; and to use β-blocker, antihypertensive, lipid-lowering, and antidepressant medications. Forty CHD and 75 CVD hard events occurred during follow-up; significantly more participants with versus without ED experienced hard events (CHD: 3.4 versus 1.4 percent; CVD: 6.3 versus 2.6 percent). ED remained a significant predictor of CVD hard events in the fully-adjusted model (hazard ratio, 1.9), while the correlation with CHD hard events became nonsignificant. In the shifted-time cross-sectional analysis, prior CVD was significantly associated with ED at visit five (odds ratio, 2.1); the correlation was attenuated, but remained significant, with adjustment for medication use and depression (odds ratio, 1.7).
“Our findings strengthen the existing evidence for the independent association between ED and incident CVD, and could have important clinical implications for risk stratification,” the authors write.
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