Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2012
Reports of fatigue preceding cardiac events have recently been confirmed by large prospective studies. To assess for genetic confounding, we investigated prolonged fatigue and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a cohort of World War II veteran twins. We examined data from a questionnaire mailed to members of the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council (NAS–NRC) World War II Twins Registry in 1998 and 1999 which included questions on demographics, medical conditions and symptoms of fatigue. Data from twins discordant for prolonged fatigue lasting a month or more were analyzed using conditional logistic regression. Among 1955 twin pairs, 157 monozygotic and 174 dizygotic pairs (mean age 74 years) were discordant for prolonged fatigue. An association was found between prolonged fatigue and a history of myocardial infarction or coronary artery surgery adjusting for age, socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol use and depression (OR [Odds Ratio]: 2.2; 95% CI: 1.3–4.0). When analyses were performed separately by zygosity, the association was slightly larger for monozygotic (OR: 3.3; 95% CI: 1.2–9.1) than dizygotic twins (OR: 1.9; 95% CI: 0.9–4.0). These data corroborate the association of fatigue with CVD and suggest that it is not influenced by a common genetic factor. Further studies are needed to clarify the relationship and to better understand the biologic mechanisms.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.