Risk of premature cerebrovascular disease in patients with ankylosing spondylitis

Patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) are at an elevated risk for the development of coronary artery disease, but the risk cerebrovascular disease among these patients remains incompletely understood. We investigated the cerebrovascular risk profiles of patients with a cerebrovascular disease and AS and compared these profiles to those of cerebrovascular disease patients without AS.

We retrospectively analyzed 34 patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease also diagnosed with AS and 597 controls without AS with respect to patient age, gender, cerebrovascular risk factors, and laboratory test results.

AS patients were significantly younger than control patients in this study (56.2±13.5 years vs. 63.0±13.4 years, respectively; p=0.004). Logistic regression analysis did not indicate significant relationships between gender, cerebrovascular risk factors, and biochemical risk factors in AS patients, nor were any significant relationships found between erythrocyte sedimentation rate or C-reactive protein and biochemical risk factors. A low frequency of large-artery atherosclerosis and high frequency of small-vessel occlusion according to TOAST classification were found in AS patients with stroke.

Among the patients included in this study, patients with AS sought treatment for cerebrovascular disease were at a younger age compared to control patients without AS. Thus, our results indicate that AS patients have an increased risk for the premature onset of cerebrovascular disease. And the premature atherosclerosis may associate with the patients with AS. Furthermore, the high frequency of the small-vessel stroke subtype in AS patients indicates that small-vessel inflammation may be involved in the pathogenesis of vascular diseases in AS patients. Further prospective study with more samples will be needed to confirm this point of view.