Recent study revealed that deadly lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) makes patients three times more prone to severe cardiac events such as a heart attack.

Research team analysed data from the computerised records of the Britain's Health Improvement Network for 920 patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and
3,593 control subjects without IPF for diagnoses of coronary events and disease incidence.

Data analysis showed that in addition to being at increased risk for heart attacks, IPF patients were 23 percent more likely to have angina, 60 percent more likely to have a stroke, and three times more likely to develop deep vein thrombosis.

Lead author Dr. Richard B. Hubbard, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham said: "If you look at them over time, people with IPF have roughly a threefold increased risk of acute coronary syndrome, which is a greater increase than you get from smoking."

Researchers said that IPF patients were more than twice as likely to have been prescribed amiodarone, a medication used to treat irregular heartbeats. The drug has been implicated as a cause of fibrotic lung disease.