Patients who take beta blockers and antiplatelet medications such as aspirin should take precautions during heat waves due to an elevated risk of heart attack under these conditions, researchers say.
Investigators looked at prior medication use in nearly 2,500 cases of non-fatal heart attacks occurring during hot weather months in Augsburg, Germany. They compared the patients’ temperature exposure on the day of the heart attack to their temperature exposure on other days in the same month.
Antiplatelet medication use was tied to a 63% increase in heart attack risk, and beta-blockers were linked to a 65% increased risk, reported Kai Chen, PhD, of the Yale School of Public Health. What’s more, people taking both drugs had a 75% higher risk.
In comparison, people who did not use those medications had no increased risk of experiencing a heart attack on hot days.
Notably, although they were less likely to have heart disease, younger patients taking beta-blockers and antiplatelet medications were more susceptible to heat-related heart attack than the older patients.
Among other heart medications, only statins were also connected to heat-related heart attacks, with a more-than threefold risk of a heart attack on hot days.
“We hypothesize that some of the medications may make it hard to regulate body temperature,” Chen and colleagues concluded.
The study was published online in Nature Cardiovascular Research.
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