Obesity threat to cardiovascular health – especially in UK
Tuesday November 28th, 2017
The world’s wealthiest countries have successfully reduced deaths from cardiovascular disease and stroke – but this is under threat from rising rates of obesity, according to a major study published today.
And the UK is the least well-placed to tackle the problem, lagging behind
many poorer countries in some areas of disease prevention, according
to the report in the European Heart Journal.
Meanwhile cardiovascular disease continues to blight the world’s middle-income countries, accounting for more than 50% of deaths, researchers found.
Researchers from the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal studied data from 56 member countries of the European Society of Cardiology, including countries from North Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet bloc.
The research showed that the UK has low cardiovascular mortality because it has the lowest prevalence of hypertension – affecting just 15.2%. This compares with 24% amongst the countries studied. It also has low smoking rates.
But it also has the highest rates of adult obesity in males and third highest levels of mean total blood cholesterol concentration.
This is alongside the third highest prevalence of inactive adults – rated as 40% of the population.
Researcher Dr Adam Timmis, from Barts Heart Centre, Queen Mary, University of London, UK, said: “Heart disease still remains the leading cause of death for middle income countries, while declines in high-income countries mean that cancer deaths have now become more common there. But this downward trend for high-income countries is being threatened by the emerging obesity epidemic that is seeing rates of diabetes increase almost everywhere.
“Interestingly, the figures show that heart disease is as much of a problem for women as for men, as we see that more are dying than before. This is especially the case for younger women, and these deaths are largely preventable through lifestyle changes.”
Adam Timmis et al. European Society of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Disease Statistics 2017 European Heart Journal 28 November 2017; doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehx628 [abstract]
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