A team of scientists from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) has shown that people with coronary artery disease (CAD) are more likely to have a furrow that crosses the earlobe. It is a sign that could be used for a first diagnosis of the disease.
Although previous studies had already pointed out the relationship between the furrow of the lobe and this disease, there is much controversy with this issue and some experts argued that the furrow can appear as a consequence of age. Since CAD is more common in older people, the relationship would be purely coincidental.
The new work, which is published in the journal Medicina (Buenos Aires), has taken into account both the age and sex of the study participants. Their results reveal that, indeed, the furrow of the ear cannot be considered an indicator of the disease in people older than 60 years, but it can be considered in individuals between 30 and 60 years old. Specifically, the probability of suffering CAD in people with a sulcus in the lobe was 5.7 times higher than in those without it.
CAD consists of the formation of plaques of fat, cholesterol and other substances in the coronary arteries, which are those that carry oxygen-laden blood to the heart. Although it will be necessary to carry out more studies to understand if the causes of the strange relationship between the sulcus of the lobe and CAD are genetic or of another type, the truth is that the presence of this sign can be used in clinical practice as a risk predictor for coronary artery disease.
