La Trobe University finds first proof that gut health can pose a risk to heart

A major Victorian study has for the first time pinpointed a link between gut health and the risk of heart attack and stroke.

A major Victorian study has identified for the first time a link between constipation and serious health complications including high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke.

The La Trobe University study of more than half a million Victorian hospital admissions found that patients with the common health problem had almost double the risk for high blood pressure and were also more likely to suffer from major cardiovascular events.

The randomised study involved data from 541,172 Victorian men and women aged over 60.

It was led by Grant Drummond and Chris Sobey from La Trobe University in collaboration with Yutang Wang from Federation University in regional Victoria. They found patients with both constipation and hypertension (high blood pressure) had a more than 500 per cent higher risk of cardiovascular events.

Professor Drummond told the Herald Sun that there has been anecdotal evidence of the connection previously, but this is the first study to discover an actual relationship.

He said there was a need to look “outside the box” for causes of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) because the incidence in Australia had nearly doubled over the past 30 years.

Professor Sobey says that while it is unclear whether constipation is a direct cause of hypertension in elderly patients, such a relationship is plausible.

The team recently reported the results of the study in the journal Scientific Reports saying interest stemmed from the fact that despite efforts to modify traditional risk factors with lifestyle and drug interventions, cardiovascular events were still responsible for 32 per cent of global deaths.

Professor Grant Drummond says constipation is known to cause a loss of beneficial bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract.

“Therefore, identifying non-traditional CVD risk factors and developing strategies to address them is critical,” they said.

Professor Drummond says the connection is plausible because in constipation there is increased water absorption from the gut.

He said the longer faeces remains in the gastrointestinal tract, the more water is absorbed from it.

“That water then enters the blood stream and increases blood volume and that’s a possible way it might drive up blood pressure,” Professor Drummond said.

“We are really interested as a research team in this link.”

Professor Drummond said there has been a lot of interest from researchers in investigating the relationship between disturbances to the gut microbiota - the microorganisms that live in the gastrointestinal tract — and conditions such as high blood pressure and atherosclerosis, which can cause heart attack and stroke.

He said there was also a lot of reasons to think that constipation might be related to hypertension because of the changes it causes to the gut microbiota. Constipation is known to cause a loss of beneficial bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract and this can lead to inflammation.

Professor Drummond said the findings suggest that interventions to address constipation may reduce cardiovascular risk in elderly patients.

“It is an association study so we can’t say for sure that constipation is causing CVD or hypertension; all we can say is patients who have constipation have a higher risk,” he said.

“Now that we have this information, the way we test it is to move to clinical trials where you treat an individual’s constipation with diet, exercise or medicine and then determine if this can reduce their blood pressure.”

Professor Drummond says anyone concerned about their gut health should talk to their general practitioner to work out the best way to treat it.

Originally published as La Trobe University finds first proof that gut health can pose a risk to heart