Cardiovascular Risk for Patients With and Without Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, or Bipolar Disorder

Abstract

Background To compare estimated 10‐year and 30‐year cardiovascular risk in primary care patients with and without serious mental illness (SMI; bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or schizoaffective disorder). Methods and Results All patients aged 18 to 75 years with a primary care visit in January 2016 to September 2018 were included and were grouped into those with and without SMI using diagnosis codes. Ten‐year cardiovascular risk was estimated using atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease scores for patients aged 40 to 75 years without cardiovascular disease; 30‐year cardiovascular risk was estimated using Framingham risk scores for patients aged 18 to 59 years without cardiovascular disease. Demographic, vital sign, medication, diagnosis, and health insurance data were collected from the electronic health record by a clinical decision support system. Descriptive statistics examined unadjusted differences, while general linear models examined differences for continuous variables and logistic regression models for categorical variables. Models were then adjusted for age, sex, race, ethnicity, and insurance type. A total of 11 333 patients with SMI and 579 924 patients without SMI were included. After covariate adjustment, 10‐year cardiovascular risk was significantly higher in patients with SMI (mean, 9.44%; 95% CI, 9.29%–9.60%) compared with patients without SMI (mean, 7.99%; 95% CI, 7.97–8.02). Similarly, 30‐year cardiovascular risk was significantly higher in those with SMI (25% of patients with SMI in the highest‐risk group compared with 11% of patients without SMI; P<0.001). The individual cardiovascular risk factors contributing most to increased risk for those with SMI were elevated body mass index and smoking. Among SMI subtypes, patients with bipolar disorder had the highest 10‐year cardiovascular risk, while patients with schizoaffective disorder had the highest 30‐year cardiovascular risk. Conclusions The significantly increased cardiovascular risk associated with SMI is evident even in young adults. This suggests the importance of addressing uncontrolled major cardiovascular risk factors in those with SMI at as early an age as possible. Registration URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT02451670.

Keywords

• bipolar disorder
• cardiovascular
• risk factors
• schizophrenia
• serious mental illness