Does a Sjogren's Syndrome Diagnosis Put You at Risk for MI?

Image of MI -- or myocardial infarction AKA heart attack -- found on Wikipedia. 

Interesting. Read this from Medpage Today regarding elevated risk of MI in patients with Sjogren's Syndrome:

PARIS -- Patients with Sjogren's syndrome, an autoimmune condition characterized by inflammation of the tear ducts and salivary glands, had more than double the heart attack risk seen in the general population, a researcher reported here. 

Compared with matched controls, patients with Sjogren's syndrome had an incident rate ratio for myocardial infarction (MI) of 2.19 (95% CI 1.40-3.31), according to Antonio Avina-Zubieta, MD, PhD, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Continue reading here.  

(Medpage Today adds this comment: Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.)

Dr. Avina-Zubieta presented his findings at the European Conference of Rheumatology 2014. He and his colleagues also discovered this:

They also looked at the risk over time and found that MI risk was almost four times higher during the first year after diagnosis (RR 3.6, 95% CI 1.6-7.3), "with inflammation being the main driver of risk during early disease," he said.

Startling: MI risk four times higher during the first year after diagnosis. This is concerning in and of itself, but I wonder how these numbers vary in view of the fact that many people are not diagnosed with Sjogren's for many years, some even decades.

Once again -- Early detection and diagnosis is vital.