Chemicals found in nonstick cookware, cleaning products, and paint may help lead to new treatments for heart disease in diabetic adults, according to a West Virginia University (WVU) epidemiologist's research.

Kim Innes, of the WVU School of Public Health, and her colleagues recently discovered that greater exposure to perfluoroalkyl substances was associated with lower rates of existing coronary heart disease in adults with diabetes. PFAS, considered a public health threat by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are manufactured chemicals that were popularized by various industries in the 1940s because of their ability to repel oil and water.

In this study, researchers investigated the association of blood PFAS levels to coronary heart disease using data gathered as part of the C8 Health Project. A large, community-based study launched in 2005, the C8 Health Project was created to address the potential health effects stemming from contamination of West Virginia and Ohio drinking water with the PFAS perfluorooctanoic acid (also called C8) between 1950 and 2004.

Of the 5,270 adults with diabetes in this study—led by Baqiyyah Conway, University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler—1,489 had been diagnosed with coronary heart disease previously, and 3,781 had not. The researchers investigated the relation between blood levels of four PFAS and coronary heart disease, considering the participants' age, sex, race, body mass index (BMI), smoking history, duration of diabetes, kidney function, chronic kidney disease, and other traits.