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Symptomatic asthma or asthma that requires daily medication may increase the risk of heart attack, according to two studies presented at the recent American Heart Association’s scientific sessions.

The first study involved 6,792 participants aged, on average, 62 years. After adjusting for heart disease risk factors, people with asthma who required daily inhaled corticosteroids or another anti-inflammatory were 60 per cent more likely to have a cardiovascular event (such as a heart attack or stroke) during a 10-year follow-up than people without asthma. The second study compared 543 patients who had a heart attack with the same number of age and sex-matched controls who had not suffered a myocardial infarction. After allowing for traditional heart disease risk factors, it was found that patients with asthma had about a 70 per cent higher risk of heart attack than those without the disease.

Patients with ‘active asthma’ (symptoms, medication use or visits for asthma treatment within the previous year) were twice as likely to have a heart attack as asthma patients with no recent symptoms.