An association between autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease and the risk of acute myocardial infarction in Asian population — results of a nationwide study

Cardiovascular complications are the leading causes of death in patients with autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) in the Western countries. However, theprevalence and risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients with ADPKD remain unknown, especially in Asian population. We utilized the data from Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to perform a population-based cohort study (1997-2008). A total of 2062 patients with ADPKD were selected from one million of general population after excluding those patients with age less than 18 years old, receiving renal replacement therapy, and concomitant diagnoses of AMI. Additionally, we set up those patients without ADPKD as comparison group by matching study cohort with age, gender, income and urbanization with 1:10 ratio (n=20620). The results showed that although the prevalence of AMI in ADPKD patients in Taiwan was lower than those in the United States (2.91% v.s. 6%, p=0.0567), the Taiwanese ADPKD group had significantly higher prevalence of AMI as compared with the non-ADPKD group (2.91% v.s. 0.97%, p<0.0001). In addition, Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that cumulative incidence of AMI was significantly higher in ADPKD than in the non-ADPKD group (all p<0.001). After adjusting for age, gender and comorbidities by multivariate and sensitivity analysis, ADPKD patients had 2.43-fold greater risk for developing AMI as compared with non-ADPKD patients (95% CI 1.8 to 3.29, p<0.0001). In conclusion, Taiwanese patients with ADPKD have lower prevalence of AMI as compared to Americans, whereas ADPKD per se remains independently predictive of AMI in Asian population.