• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Heart-Disease Risk Factors Build Up

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By Jeffrey Tannenbaum Bloomberg News

Almost half of Americans who are free of cardiovascular disease at age 50 will develop it later in life, a study suggests.

That figure drops to 5.2 percent among 50-year-old men who don't smoke, aren't diabetic and have low cholesterol and blood pressure. Such people, about 3 in every 100 men in the study group, live about 11 years longer than men who have two or more of the risk factors at age 50, the researchers said. The study was published Monday in the journal Circulation.

"We need a real shift in public health. People need to be treated intensively to prevent the outcome of the risk factors," said the study leader, Donald Lloyd-Jones, in a Feb. 3 telephone interview. "We need to get more people to age 50 with optimal risk factors."

The 4.5 percent of women with "optimal" health risks had about 8 chances in 100 of developing cardiovascular disease. About seven in 10 men and half of women with two or more "major" risk factors, as defined by the researchers, stand to develop cardiovascular disease, the researchers wrote.

Although mortality rates from cardiovascular disease have declined in the U.S. recently, no other illness comes close to it as a killer of Americans. Cardiovascular disease accounts for about four in 10 deaths in the U.S., or twice as many as for all forms of cancer combined, said Lloyd-Jones, 41, a cardiologist at Northwestern University's medical school in Chicago.

The research, funded in part by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., used data from the continuing Framingham Heart Study. The latest research involved data on 3,564 men and 4,362 women. The journal Circulation is published by the Dallas-based American Heart Association.

The research showed that 52 percent of the men and 39 percent of the women developed cardiovascular disease in their lifetime. Those figures cover the chances of getting the disease by age 95. The researchers also concluded that 50-year-old men have a 35 percent chance of getting cardiovascular illness by age 75, compared with 19 percent for women.

Lloyd-Jones said people can use drugs and take other actions to mitigate risks after 50. Even better, he said, is to cut future risk through diet and exercise decades earlier.

The number of 50-year-olds with optimal risk factors is "tragically low," he said. Having two or more "major" risk factors raises the chances of getting cardiovascular disease to 69 percent for men and 50 percent for women.

The Framingham, Mass., area was populated by white families in 1948, when researchers began a series of studies there to identify factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease. While everyone in the new study was white, Lloyd-Jones said other research suggests that lifetime risks of cardiovascular disease may be similar for blacks.

Having diabetes at age 50 conferred the greatest likelihood of eventually developing cardiovascular disease, the study found. Two of three diabetics at age 50 will develop the disease by age 75, the researchers wrote.

Smokers at age 50 had about the same chance of avoiding developing cardiovascular disease after age 50 as nonsmokers, largely because many smokers died earlier than nonsmokers from other causes, according to the study.

Smoking cut about five years from the lives of both men and women, the researchers wrote. As more smokers died from cancer and lung diseases, nonsmokers lived longer and many went on to develop cardiovascular disease.

In the study, the "optimal" level for avoiding illness was a cholesterol reading of less than 180 milligrams per deciliter of blood, and a blood pressure reading of less than 120 over less than 80 for blood-pressure. "Major" risk factors, along with diabetes and smoking, were a cholesterol reading of 240 milligrams per deciliter of blood and a blood pressure reading of higher than 160 and 100.

Over the years of the study, 1,757 people had heart attacks or other cardiovascular events and 1,641 died free of cardiovascular disease, the researchers said. Median survival after age 50 was 30 years for men and 36 for women.

Lifetime risk estimates for individual patient are tough to pin down, researchers said.

Each person has "unique risks" depending in part on genetic predisposition, the researchers wrote. The data might prompt more people to reduce their risks, much as publication of lifetime risks for breast cancer have prompted many women to get mammograms, the scientists said.

Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

More News in this Category