Heart disease patients who have had a greater exposure to bacteria and viruses tend to have more clogging in their arteries and a worse prognosis than patients exposed to fewer infectious agents.

The finding adds to the growing body of evidence that inflammation and infection play a key role in the development of atherosclerosis, the clogging of arteries that can lead to heart attacks.

Their study included 572 patients who were admitted to the hospital for cardiac catheterization, a technique used to locate blockages in arteries in people who have had a heart attack or who are at risk for one.

All the patients were tested for antibodies -- a sign of past infection -- to several bacteria and viruses, including herpes simplex virus 1 and 2, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, Haemophilus influenzae, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Helicobacter pylori.

Over the next three years or so, the researchers found that patients who had four to five past infections were nearly twice as likely to have extensive clogging in the arteries as those with fewer infections. Patients with six to eight past infections were 2 to 3 times as likely to have advanced heart disease as those with fewer infections.

During the study, the cardiovascular death rate was 7% for patients with advanced atherosclerosis with zero to three infections and 20% for those with advanced atherosclerosis and six to eight infections.

The researchers demonstrated that increasing numbers of infectious pathogens were significantly related to the extent of atherosclerosis and to adverse long-term outcome.

Circulation January 8, 2002;105:2-4,15-21

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This is not a new topic as I have mentioned it nearly four years ago. Clearly, bacterial infections are a major cause of disease. The confusion many people have, including health care professionals, is that the bacteria are responsible for the disease. Nothing could be further from the truth. One's weakened immune system that opens the door for these infections to come in is usually the causal factor. This is actually good news. If we had to focus our resources on avoiding bacteria we could only be partially successful. However, if we change our eating and work on the psychoemotional wounding that most of us have, we can normalize our adrenal hormones and radically improve our immune system so we can prevent future infections and recover from any current ones. The unfortunate and complicating issue in most cases is that once the "horse is out of the barn" and one has a serious bacterial infection, it frequently is necessary to use antibiotics to recover from the illness. I fully believe that most people die from heart disease due to unresolved stress rather than their cholesterol levels or smoking. Fortunately, EFT is one of the major new tools that can be used to effectively and rapidly address these stresses. I conducted an EFT workshop that is available as a ten hour video set that can provide a sound foundation to effectively applying EFT to improve your immune system by reducing the negative influences stress has on your immune system. Related Articles: Bacterial Infections linked to Heart Disease and Stroke CMV Infection May Induce Artherosclerosis