Cats May Protect You Against Strokes and Heart Diseases

According to Adnan Qureshi, M.D, who presented results from his research at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in New Orleans, people who have a cat have less chance of dying from a heart attack and other heart diseases than people who do not keep a cat as a pet.

Qureshi, from the Minnesota Stroke Institute in Minneapolis, said in New Orleans "people who do not own cats have a 40% higher risk of dying from a myocardial infarction than people who do keep cats as pets" I was intrigued at this statement so I kept listening at the presentation to see what is all this about.

What was really interesting is that the presenter said that they found only the beneficial effects with cats and not with dogs or any other pets.

According to Qureshi, he and his colleagues examined records from National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES II). They were able to identify more than 4400 patients who did not have symptoms of coronary cardiovascular disease at the start of the study (ages 35 to 70). About 55 per cent of these owned a cat as a pet.

Using sophisticated statistical analysis the researchers were able to calculate the risk of getting cardiovascular diseases. The statistical analysis adjusted the risk for known factors such as age, gender, body mass index, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, ethnicity/race, and blood cholesterol.

After all these adjustment the researchers were able to find that people who did not own a cat had higher risk developing cardiovascular diseases especially strokes.

The only explanation that may help in understanding this apparent risk reduction in cat owner is related to stress reduction. The presenter said at the conference that maybe cats reduce stress and anxiety. These are two know causes of increase of the risk of a stroke or a cardiovascular disease. Dogs and other pets may not be effective in stress reduction, dr. Qureshi said.

The presenter hinted that maybe owning a cat could be considered a "cost-effective way to reduce heart attacks." Now, I find this statement a little bit unsubstantiated giving that the results presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference were preliminary and not subjected to peer-review.

One of the assistant to the presentation, Edgar Kenton, M.D., of Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, seem to agree with Qureschi about the benefits of pets on cardiovascular diseases. Why do you think that only cats and not dog may be beneficial for your heart?

Source:

Presentation attended:

Qureshi A et al, "Cats as domestic pets reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases: Results from the Second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study Mortality Follow-up Study." ASA Meeting 2008. New Orleans

You can download Abstracts From the 2008 International Stroke Conference (pdf) at URL:

http://stroke.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/39/2/527