Risk Factors

Medical research continues to reveal how different risk factors interact to influence a person's health and lifespan. Understanding your risks allows you to develop a strategy and make lifestyle choices accordingly. Your decisions then balance the value you place on your health with the risks that may compromise your health in the future. An increased risk does not mean the disease is inevitable; risk refers to the possibility that a disease could occur in the future.

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The risk factors for dilated cardiomyopathy include both lifestyle choices as well as genetic traits. Many of the risk factors are actually other diseases. Uncommon bacterial or viral infections, rare blood disorders, and other inflammatory diseases can lead to dilated cardiomyopathy in some people.

The more common risk factors for dilated cardiomyopathy include:

• Coronary artery disease (ischemic cardiomyopathy)
• Exposure to toxic agents such as cocaine, methamphetamines, cobalt, and certain cancer-treating drugs including doxorubicin and daunorubicin
• Family members with dilated cardiomyopathy of unknown cause
• Heart valve defects
• Myocarditis, or inflammation of the walls of the heart
• Pregnancy
• Sleep apnea
• Sustained, untreated high blood pressure
• Sustained heavy alcohol consumption

Risk factors for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy:

• Although hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is considered primarily a genetic disease, environmental factors can increase your risk of developing this condition. If you have a genetic mutation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, you are predisposed to developing this disease. If you have a blood relative with the disease, you may have one of the genetic mutations that increase your risk of developing the disease. For more about the risk factors for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, see Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

Risk factors for restrictive cardiomyopathy generally fall into three categories, which include:

• Familial. In most cases restrictive cardiomyopathy itself is not inherited but the diseases that can lead to restrictive cardiomyopathy can be.
• Cancer treatment. Radiation to the chest and some chemotherapy drugs, such as anthracycline, increase the risk of developing restrictive cardiomyopathy.
• Other disease. Dozens of diseases and conditions have been linked to restrictive cardiomyopathy. In the United States the most common of these are amyloidosis and hemochromatosis, in which protein (amyloid) or iron, respectively, are deposited in the cells of the heart muscle. Other less common diseases that can lead to restrictive cardiomyopathy include connective tissue disorders such as scleroderma and pseudoxanthoma elasticum; neoplastic diseases, in which abnormal tissue growths develop; metabolic disorders, including acromegaly and hypothyroidism; and endomyocardial fibrosis, the growth of abnormal fibers within the tissue of the heart.