Doctors have studied the days of admission of patients with severe heart attacks to hospitals in Ireland. Result: Monday stood out clearly from the other days of the week.
Sad Monday. The risk of a heart attack on Monday would be increased by 13% according to the conclusions of a study presented Monday, June 5 at the conference of The British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) in Manchester. The incidence was also slightly higher on Sundays.
To obtain these results, researchers from the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and the Royal College of Surgeons analyzed data from 10,528 patients admitted to Irish hospitals between 2013 and 2018. Only the most serious heart attacks were taken into account. account, or ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (Stemi) – this electrocardiogram data is most often related to acute and complete occlusion of a coronary artery.
The circadian rhythm involved
A spike in Stemi heart attack rates was therefore seen early in the week, especially on Monday. The reasons for this peak remain difficult to explain. “The cause is likely multifactorial, but based on what we know from previous studies, it’s reasonable to assume there’s a circadian element “, notes Jack Laffan who directed part of the work, with The Independent.
“The circadian rhythm is like the internal clock of the human body. It is an integrated biological rhythm taking the form of a cycle of approximately 24 hours and governing certain physiological processes such as sleep and food. says the Canadian Cancer Society.
The circadian rhythm already involved in the time of onset of a heart attack
This is not the first time that the circadian rhythm has been implicated in the occurrence of heart attacks. Already in 2014, the Swiss Medical Review wrote about myocardial infarction: “its incidence follows a circadian variation with a peak of maximum frequency between ten and eleven o’clock in the morning. In addition, the size of an infarction as well as the mortality rate linked to it also undergo a variation over 24 hours “.
The medical journal also described “a peak in severity around midnight independent of the ischemic time and the quality of care”. “These new data have been corroborated by studies on experimental models which highlight a link between the size of an infarction and certain genes involved in the circadian rhythm”, added the Swiss Medical Journal.