Main risk factors for cardiovascular diseases | Relationship | References | |
Traditional | Smoking | Worse prognoses and disease severity. | [2] [6] [20] [51] [52] |
Obesity | Relation to dyslipidemia. Controversial: protective effect, deleterious effect on the disease’s severity. | ||
Sedentary behavior | Correlates to the impairment of microvascular endothelium-dependent vasodilation. | ||
Hypertension |
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Insulin resistance | Chronic use of glucocorticoids. | ||
Metabolic syndrome | Chronic use of glucocorticoids. | ||
Dyslipidemia | Chronic use of glucocorticoids. | ||
Non-traditional | Disease’ activity | Immunity deregulation occurs due to disease activity, including the synergic effect of cytokines, chemokines, adipokines, proteases, autoantibodies, adhesion receptors, oxidative stress and a plethora of intracellular signaling moleculesa. | [53] [54] [55] [56] |
Autoantibodies | Antiphospholipid antibodies, anti-oxidized palmitoyl-arachidonyl-phosphocholine, antibodies to 65 and 70 kDa heat shock proteins (anti-hsp65 and -hsp70), anti-HDL, anti-apolipoprotein A-I and anti-lipoprotein lipase. The release of high numbers of these autoantibodies may increase oxidative stress, leading to endothelial cell damage and apoptosis and helping accelerate the atherosclerotic process. | ||
Cytokines | Pro-inflammatory mechanism involved is increased by C-reactive protein, adipocytokines and proteases. |