For dialysis patients, high scores on a new fatigue rating scale predict an increased risk of heart attack or other cardiovascular events, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN).
Fatigue could be an important warning sign of serious cardiovascular events—especially in patients without other obvious risk factors, according to the study led by Hidenori Koyama, MD, PhD, and Yoshiki Nishizawa, MD, PhD (Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan). "Our data highlight for the first time the pathophysiological significance of fatigue as an important bio-alarm for cardiovascular disease," Koyama comments.
The researchers evaluated their fatigue questionnaire in a group of 788 dialysis patients. Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms experienced by dialysis patients.
About 16 percent of the dialysis patients had a high fatigue score. At two years' follow-up, patients with high fatigue scores were more than twice as likely to have cardiovascular events such as a heart attack (myocardial infarction) or stroke.
A key feature of the new fatigue questionnaire was that it differentiated fatigue from the many factors associated with it, such as anxiety and depression, pain, overwork, or infection. Fatigue itself was the strongest predictor of cardiovascular risk, even in patients without known risk factors, such as malnutrition, diabetes, and previous cardiovascular disease.