Blood mutations linked to heart, kidney, and metabolic disease
Participants with age-related expansion of mutated blood cells had an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.11 for progression to syndrome stage 4 compared with participants without the condition.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In an observational study, researchers analyzed 433,924 UK Biobank participants, averaging 56.5 years of age, including 235,364 females, with no history of blood cancer. They examined clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP), an age-related expansion of blood cells carrying acquired mutations. They assessed cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome, which links heart disease, excess or dysfunctional body fat, diabetes and chronic kidney disease across five stages.
Among participants, 14,559 had CHIP. They had greater odds of higher syndrome stages than participants without CHIP. Among those initially at stages 0–3, CHIP was associated with progression to stage 4 over a median 13.6 years. The adjusted hazard ratio was 1.11, a relative measure of risk over time. The links were driven by subtypes involving genes other than DNMT3A. The DNMT3A subtype showed no association with initial stage or progression.
Why it matters
Age-related blood cell expansion may be relevant to assessing risk and developing targeted treatments for cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome.
Caveats
The observational design cannot show whether the blood cell expansion causes disease progression. People with a history of blood cancer were excluded, so applicability to them is unclear; the findings were presented in a conference abstract.
