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 “Previous studies have found relationships between neighborhood
characteristics and cardiovascular disease,” said lead author
Jeffrey Wing of Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids,
Michigan. “Finding that the density of healthy food stores was the
only factor among those tested that consistently was related to
slowing the progression of coronary calcium build-up was interesting
in that we didn’t see the same relation with other neighborhood
features,” like recreation centers, Wing told Reuters Health by
email.
Coronary artery calcium buildup hardens the arteries and causes
atherosclerosis, which underlies many cases of heart disease. Heart
disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., responsible for
one in every four deaths, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The researchers analyzed data from a large multiethnic study of
atherosclerosis, in which 6,000 adults had CT scans for coronary
artery calcium at the start, and at least once more after a 12-year
follow-up period. Almost 90 percent of participants had three CT
scans over time, with an average of three to four years between each
scan.
Researchers also recorded neighborhood features like recreational
facilities, healthy food stores, walking environments, healthy food
stores and social environment.
They found that people with healthy food stores within one mile of
their homes had slower coronary artery calcium buildup over time
than those who lived further away from fresh food sources, according
to the results in Circulation.
Coronary calcium in itself is not a health endpoint for patients,
Wing noted.
“Coronary calcium, as we used it, was a marker for subclinical
disease,” he said. That means the study team was trying to get at
“future cardiovascular outcomes” like heart attacks and strokes
without having to wait for those endpoints to actually occur, he
said.
“Though there has been a fair amount of research on this topic,
researchers don’t have one consistent way of measuring access to
fresh food and that can make it difficult to come up with a good
estimate,” said co-lead author Ella August of the University of
Michigan School of Public Health in Grand Rapids.
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“Previous studies have found that predominantly black neighborhoods
have fewer supermarkets compared to predominantly white
neighborhoods in the U.S.,” she said.
Some options for providing fresh food in such “food deserts” have
been implemented on a small scale, like mobile urban produce vendors
that drive through city streets offering apples, lettuce and
carrots, August told Reuters Health by email.
“Michelle Obama has also made some efforts to increase funding for
urban supermarkets, but these have been challenging to implement,”
August said. “We need to work harder to find ways to provide access
to healthy food to everyone in this country.”
“These findings suggest points of intervention on a neighborhood
level that may be particularly impactful for improving health
outcomes of its residents,” Adelaida M. Rosario, a health specialist
at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Eliseo J.
Perez-Stable, director of the National Institute on Minority Health
and Health Disparities, write in an accompanying editorial.
Quitting smoking, being physically active and engaging in other
healthy behaviors are other things individuals can do to reduce
heart disease risk if they have limited access to healthy food
alternatives, Wing said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1XIhahI Circulation, online August 15, 2016.
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