By connecting the findings with other studies that included almost 900,000 people it was proved that adults with a history of this disease were 23 percent more likely to develop heart disease.
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Patients with history of gallstone disease may have a slightly increased risk of developing coronary heart disease (CHD), according to research published online August 18 in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. But those risk factors couldn’t completely explain away the finding, the researchers said.
For people unfamiliar with gallstones, they are small, hardened deposits that can be found in the gallbladder, which is an organ that sits just below the liver.
While gallstones do not show symptoms in many people, they can cause abdominal pain if they block a bile duct usually after a heavy meal. In most of the cases, the treatment includesremoving the gallbladder through a surgery. “The results from meta-analysis revealed that a history of gallstone disease was associated with a 23% (15%-33%) increased CHD risk”.
As the Telegraph reports, even in people who appear generally healthy, the correlation between the two problems is there and heart disease is more likely.
Cardiologist Dr. Richard Stein suggests that gallstones alone may be a risk factor for heart disease.
Interestingly, in the second analysis, Dr. Qi also found that individuals with gallstones who were otherwise healthy (not obese, normal blood pressure, and non-diabetic) still had a higher risk of developing coronary heart disease than those who were diabetic, obese, and had high blood pressure. The results were then pooled with the findings from other studies with nearly 900,000 participants.
Stein speculated on another possibility: Some cases of gallstone disease might spur low levels of inflammation in the body that feed the development of heart disease.
A latest studyhas suggested that people who’ve suffered gallstones could be slightly more vulnerable to suffer from a heart disease.
The researchers did not identify why gallstone disease and coronary heart disease were linked in this study, but one theory is that gallstones may affect bile acid secretion, which has been related to cardiovascular risk factors.
Gut microbiota has also been linked to cardiovascular disease and patients with gallstones tend to have abnormal abundance and metabolism in their gut microbiota.
But some other factors – such as obesity, and diets high in fat and processed carbohydrates – can be changed, the institute suggests.
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A history of gallstone disease may increase your risk of coronary heart disease, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. “We are going to investigate whether gallstone disease is related to other diseases such as diabetes, and mortality”, he replied.
