Association Between Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in Pooled Occupational Cohorts

Abstract

In this workplace population, there is a strong association between CVD risk scores and both CTS and abnormal nerve conduction study that persisted after controlling for confounders. These data suggest a potentially modifiable disease mechanism.

Increased Risk of Coronary Artery Disease in People with a Previous Diagnosis of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: A Nationwide Retrospective Population-Based Case-Control Study

“…This analysis of NHIRD data supports our contention that patients with a previous diagnosis of CTS are at significant risk of developing CAD ( P <0.0001). Existing evidence supports an association between CAD and the risk factors of hyperlipidemia, DM and hypertension [3, 4], while more recent research also suggests an association between some neuromuscular diseases, including CTS, as risk factors for CAD [26]. That research is supported by our study findings indicating that a previous diagnosis of CTS could be a risk factor for CAD.…”

“…Occupation-related investigations have suggested a strong relationship between CAD and CTS [26], but some data have indicated that cardiovascular risk factors or the metabolic syndrome may increase the risk of CTS [26, 27]. Our study aimed to determine the risk of CAD in people with a previous diagnosis of CTS.…”

Role of Biomechanical Factors in Resolution of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Among a Population of Workers

“…Reported, non-occupational risk factors for CTS include age, female sex, body mass index (BMI), biopsychosocial factors, diabetes, smoking, Framingham heart risk scores, wrist depth/width ratio, and genetics (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26). There are also reported associations with work involving combinations of high force and repetition (27)(28)(29), and there is some evidence for increased risk with high amplitude vibrating hand tools (24,25,30).…”

Carpal tunnel syndrome and manual work: the OCTOPUS cohort, results of a ten-year longitudinal study

“…When interpreting these figures, it should be kept in mind that the values for ACGIH TLV® categories might be underestimated due to exposure misclassificationthat is more likely to attenuate rather than inflate our estimates. Also, we did not measure some personal (eg, cardiovascular risk factors) and occupational (eg, psychosocial risk factors) characteristics that were recently hypothesized as risk factors for CTS (36,37). On the one hand, the absence of information on these variables could substantially affect the calculation of attributable fractions only under the unlikely hypothesis that these factors were strong confounders of the association between CTS risk and biomechanical exposures.…”