New research finds poverty, chronic inflammation together triple risk of cancer death
poverty and chronic inflammation could more than double the risk of death from heart disease and triple the mortality risk due to cancer over a 15-year period, new research in the US has found. Poverty has been documented to individually heighten the risk of mental illness, heart disease, hypertension, and stroke, in addition to higher mortality and lower life expectancy.
Further, chronic inflammation brought about by lifestyle factors like poor diet or lack of physical activity, or being exposed to environmental toxins, or having autoimmune disorders such as arthritis also is a known risk factor for disease and mortality.
However, researchers at the University of Florida said they have shown for the first time that the combined effect of poverty and chronic inflammation could reduce health and life expectancy even further, significantly worse than the outcomes expected when evaluated separately.
«We found that participants with either inflammation or poverty alone each had about a 50 per cent increased risk in all-cause mortality. In contrast, individuals with both inflammation and poverty had a 127 per cent increased heart disease mortality risk and a 196 per cent increased cancer mortality risk,» said Frank A.
Orlando, an associate professor at the University of Florida and second author of the study published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
The team further found that both the risk factors — poverty and chronic inflammation — worked together in a «synergistic» or an interactive manner in heightening the mortality risk, rather than merely in an «additive» manner.
