Heart attacks and strokes rarely happen out of the blue; they’re typically triggered by specific risk factors.
A team of cardiologists from Northwestern University in Illinois analyzed health data from adults in South Korea and the United States. The researchers found that more than 9 million people in those countries who experienced serious cardiovascular events had at some point in their lives one of four primary risk factors.
What are these factors?
The factors include:
- Smoking (past or present)
- High blood pressure (hypertension)
- High blood cholesterol
- High blood sugar (diabetes)
Together, these factors accounted for 99 percent of all cardiovascular events during the long-term study, Science Alert reported.
Even among women under 60 — a demographic with the lowest overall risk of cardiovascular events — more than 95 percent of heart attacks and strokes were linked to one of these factors.
The researchers found that high blood pressure was responsible for the most events. In both the U.S. and South Korea, over 93 percent of people who suffered a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure had previously experienced hypertension.
That means timely monitoring and control of blood pressure could prevent many serious cardiovascular diseases.
Cardiologist Philip Greenland, the lead author of the study, said, “Our goal now is to diligently seek ways to control these modifiable risk factors, rather than getting sidetracked by other factors that are not causal.”
His team says the findings challenge previous studies that claimed an increasing share of cardiovascular events occur without identifiable risk factors. Those earlier studies may not have accounted for risk levels that fall below clinical diagnostic thresholds.
In a commentary, cardiologist Neha Padhyipati from Duke University, who was not involved in the study, emphasized its importance: the results underline how crucial it is to address risk factors before they lead to serious, potentially fatal outcomes.
The study’s conclusions were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Photo: Openverse
