Heart Problems, Jill

[Guest guest]

Jill, there is a good paper on the heart problems associated with Spondy

diseases. It is dated 1997, so it isn't the newest of studies. However, it seems

to be to be a thorough study of the heart diseases of AS and Reiter's.

According to this data, not all people with long standing disease, or even

severe disease comes down with heart problems. I think it is just that the

disease attacks each of us differently and some have more chronic type disease

and some have just one or two complications (like iritis or IBD). It mentions

that many people who are HLA B27 who don't even have the arthritis problems

will come down with one of the heart problems. I was amazed at how many of

these heart patients (that didn't know they were HLA B27 had come down with

heart

problems....having no other symptoms of spondy. There were other articles

that said, like you mentioned, that people with a more severe type arthritis,

can go on to have heart problems. My hands are up in protest....as they should

have more knowledge about this in the test books. My eye doctors have had

patients that only come down with iritis, but never have arthritis symptoms.

So, this disease is highly individual and even with a really bad case of

arthritis, like yourself, you may never have heart problems. The heart

problems,

even though some Reiter's patients can have them, it seems, through this

article anyway, that it is more common in AS. I'll give you the web site of

this

study:

_HLA-B27-Associated Cardiac Disease -- Bergfeldt 127 (81): 621 -- ls of

Internal Medicine_ (http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/8_Part_1/621)

You mentioned what type of symptoms you should be looking out for.. Since I

have had rapid heart and PVC (premature Ventricular contractions) with

shortness of breath that have lasted for months on end....then mysteriously go

away

for many more years. I am interested in knowing the symptoms, too. I've had a

heart catherization for narrowing of arteries and a stress test, but this

was for some other heart problem, so they didn't look for the problems

associated with spondy. My daughter (who gets tennis elbow and is HLA B27, had

a

heart block and has a stent in one of the major arteries. Another daughter,

when

she was two weeks old turned blue with a conduction problem with the

pacemaker of her heart. She was on digitalis for quite some time. As a grown

up, she

has typical AS and is HLA B27 Following, is a list of the heart problems

associated with Spondy and the web site where you can find the symptoms and

description of the problems:

1. Aortic Valvular Regurgitation (Valve disease)

_eMedicine - Aortic Regurgitation : Article by Jerry Balentine, DO_

(http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic39.htm)

2. Mitral Valve Regurgitation

_Mitral valve regurgitation - MayoClinic.com_

(http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mitral-valve-regurgitation/DS00421/DSECTION=2)

3.Atrioventricular Block

_THE MERCK MANUAL, Sec. 16, Ch. 205, Arrhythmias_

(http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/section16/chapter205/205k.jsp)

4. Carditis " and " cardiomyopathy

_Dilated and Restrictive Cardiomyopathies_

(http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/diseasemanagement/cardiology/cardiomyopathy\

/cardiomyopathy.htm)