Data about cardiovascular risk (CVR) in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) may not be fully captured by traditional scores. This case-control study evaluated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk through non-invasive tools in IIM patients compared with healthy controls (HC). We assessed CVD risk in 24 IIM patients and 38 paired controls applying traditional calculators such as the Framingham Risk Score (FRS), contemporary calculators including QRISK3, Globorisk laboratory (Globorisk lab), and the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk estimator, along with non-invasive vascular tools: pulse wave velocity (PWV) and flow-mediated dilation (FMD). Statistical analyses included χ², Fisher’s exact test, Spearman correlation, and multivariate regression. cfPWV and FMD were similar between groups. However, the CVR scores exceeded high-risk thresholds using QRISK3, ACC/AHA ASCVD, and Globorisk lab. We classified as high vs. low CVR according to the risk scores. The high-risk subgroup was characterized by older age (median 66 vs. 44 years, p = 0.001), higher systolic blood pressure (130 vs. 114 mmHg, p = 0.012), and higher MDI (0.07 vs. 0.01, p = 0.010). A multiple linear regression analysis showed that cfPWV was primarily associated with age, and anti-SAE1 antibody. CVR in IIM appears heterogeneous. Although functional vascular biomarkers cfPWV and FMD did not differ overall vs. HC. Multimodal risk characterization integrating risk estimates with non-invasive vascular assessment and clinical disease features warrants prospective outcome-based validation.
Garcia-Ordoñez et al. (Sat,) studied this question.