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By Lisa Rapaport
(Reuters Health) – A new analysis suggests that people with high blood pressure or high cholesterol before the age of 40 are more likely to have a heart attack later in life than other adults.
The analysis gathered data from six studies involving a total of 36,030 people. From the average age of 53-year-old participants, the researchers followed them to see who had a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure.
By the time half of the people were followed for at least 17 years, participants with high levels of LDL "bad" cholesterol before age 40 – that is, greater than about 129 milligrams per deciliter of blood – were 64% more likely to have had events such as heart attacks compared to people with low LDL in early adulthood.
The upper limit of normal blood pressure is 120/80. Younger adults who had high systolic blood pressure – the "highest number" – were 37% more likely to develop heart failure later in life. And young adults with high diastolic blood pressure – the "bottom number" – were 21% more likely to develop heart failure afterwards.
"Many young adults feel good or want to think, everything is fine now, I will make healthy choices later, when I grow up," said Dr. Andrew Moran, lead author of the study and researcher at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
"This study shows that healthy choices are important even among young adults," Moran said by e-mail. "It means not smoking, eating healthy, and exercising regularly."
And for some high-risk young adults, starting taking medication to manage risk factors at a younger age – something that is not currently being done – may be worthwhile, Moran added.
Very few people participating in the study had high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels in young adults, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
During the follow-up, 4,570 participants had heart attacks, 5,119 cases of heart failure and 2,862 had a stroke.
The study can not explain whether high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol levels in early adulthood could directly cause a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure later in life.
One of the limitations of the analysis lies in the fact that, since the smaller studies used in the analysis did not include blood pressure and cholesterol measurements over the course of life, researchers sometimes had to estimate the number of young adults with these risk factors based on the data they had. older participants.
"Heart failure and heart attacks are the result of years of exposure to risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol," said Dr. Samuel Gidding, co-author from an editorial accompanying the study and medical director of the Foundation FH (Familial Hypercholesterolemia) from Pasadena. , California.
"Both lead to fat accumulation in the coronary arteries beginning in childhood, which leads to a heart attack later in life," Gidding said via email. "High blood pressure puts extra pressure on the heart and adaptation to this stress leads to heart failure."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2lnLSoy and http://bit.ly/2lsFzjD Journal of the American College of Cardiology, online July 15, 2019.
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