People who develop asthma in adulthood have an increased risk of cardiovascular events including MI and stroke compared to people with early onset asthma and those without asthma, a large study finds.

The prospective observational cohort study involving 1269 adults without heart disease who were followed for over a decade found that those with late onset asthma (defined as diagnosed at aged over 18 years) had a 57% higher risk of incident cardiovascular disease than people without asthma after adjusting for confounders such as age, sex, and CVD risk factors (HR 1.57; 95% CI  1.01 to 2.45; P=0.045).

Unlike other studies the research group did not find that women with late onset asthma had a higher risk of  cardiovascular events compared to men.

Writing in the Journal of the American Heart Association  the researchers said that given the public health burden of asthma, further investigations into the mechanisms of this association in specific asthma phenotypes were needed.