From Atherosclerosis to Myocardial Infarction: A Process-Oriented Model Investigating the Role of Risk Factors

Autor: Cristoforo Simonetto, Margit Heier, Annette Peters, Jan Christian Kaiser, Susanne Rospleszcz
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Am. J. Epidemiol. 191, 1766–1775 (2022)
American Journal of Epidemiology
ISSN: 1476-6256
Popis: Mathematical models are able to reflect biological processes and to capture epidemiologic data. Thus, they may help elucidate roles of risk factors in disease progression. We propose to account for smoking, hypertension, and dyslipidemia in a previously published process-oriented model that describes the development of atherosclerotic lesions resulting in myocardial infarction (MI). The model is sex-specific and incorporates individual heterogeneity. It was applied to population-based individual risk factors and MI rates (Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg (KORA) study) together with subclinical atherosclerotic lesion data (Pathobiological Determinants of Atherosclerosis in Youth (PDAY) study). Different model variants were evaluated, testing the association of risk factors with different disease processes. Best fits were obtained for smoking affecting a late-stage disease process, suggesting a thrombogenic role. Hypertension was mainly related to complicated, vulnerable lesions. Dyslipidemia was consistent with increasing the number of initial lesions. By accounting for heterogeneity, individual hazard ratios differ from the population average. The mean individual hazard ratio for smoking was twice the population-based hazard ratio for men and even more for women. Atherosclerotic lesion progression and MI incidence data can be related in a mathematical model to illuminate how risk factors affect different phases of this pathological process.
Databáze: OpenAIRE