Association of social support and myocardial infarction: A case-control study

Background: Social support plays an important role in the promotion and maintenance of our health. Lack of social support leads to various health issues including heart diseases, especially myocardial infarction (MI). Studies investigating the association between lack of social support and MI are very limited among our population. Therefore, the current study was carried out for determining the effect of social support on the incidence of MI. Materials and Methods: We using convenient sampling method recruited a total of 150 each case (with MI) and controls (without MI) who were matched for age and gender during September 2016 and August 2017 into the study from a tertiary care hospital in Kerala. The design we employed for this study was a case–control study design. Results: Among the cases, 35.3% reported low levels of social support as against 21.3% among controls. Multivariate logistic regression analysis after adjusting for the confounders indicated that low level of social support is positively and statistically significantly associated with MI (odds ratio 2.541; 95% confidence interval: 1.121–5.761, P = 0.026). Conclusion: Low social support is associated with the incidence of MI.