LemonadeLabs Here’s some worrisome news for folks who manage to survive a heart attack: New research suggests they might be far more vulnerable to developing cancer down the road.
People who suffered a heart health scare — a heart attack, heart failure or a dangerously erratic heart rhythm — had a more than sevenfold increased risk for subsequently developing cancer, compared to those with healthy tickers, researchers said.
“We found that folks with certain risk factors for heart disease had an increased risk of cancer and, more intriguingly, we found up that individuals who ended up developing heart disease had a significantly increased risk of future cancer,”
lead researcher Dr. Emily Lau, a cardiology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
These findings are based on data from the Framingham Heart Study, a famous decades-long research project following the heart health of people living in the small town of Framingham, Mass.
Lau and her colleagues had noticed that many regular patients with heart disease were also fighting cancer.