TORONTO, May 09 (Reuters Health) - Healthy, middle-aged men who have
persistent phlegm are at greater risk of dying from any cause compared with
their phlegm-free counterparts, according to study findings presented here
during the 96th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society.
Although researchers cannot explain their findings, "we do think that they
are important," Dr. Knut Stavem told Reuters Health in an interview. He added
that given phlegm is "a fairly simple symptom to measure, people should take
these symptoms seriously" and doctors should at least "be aware that patients
(with persistent phlegm) have a higher mortality risk than others."
Stavem and colleagues from the Central Hospital of Akershus, Nordbyhagen,
Norway, looked at apparently healthy men aged 40 to 59 who had been followed for
an average of 23 years. The men had completed a questionnaire between 1972 and
1975 in which they reported the presence of breathlessness when hurrying or
walking up a slight hill, and of having phlegm on most days for as much as 3
months a year.
"We controlled for physical fitness by a symptom-limited exercise test,
which is normally not done in other similar studies," Stavem said. The
researchers also took into account for age, smoking status, lung function, blood
pressure and cholesterol.
At the end of the 23-year follow-up, 24% of the men had died, and 54% had
died due to cardiovascular causes.
When the group compared men who reported no symptoms of phlegm with those
who reported having relatively persistent phlegm, they observed that
symptom-free men were 41% less likely to die from noncardiovascular causes as
those who had persistent phlegm.
The men without phlegm were also 29% less likely to die of any cause than
men with phlegm. The risk of dying of cardiovascular disease was the same,
regardless of phlegm problems.
"Breathlessness showed the same pattern but it was a weaker predictor (of
mortality risk)," researchers report. "We usually think that phlegm is related
to chronic bronchitis or smoking, but in our study, we show that phlegm is an
independent predictor of noncardiovascular and all-cause mortality, independent
of age, FEV1 (a measure of lung function), physical fitness, smoking, systolic
blood pressure and serum cholesterol," Stavem confirmed.
