NEW DELHI: About 20 among 100 adults over 30 years in Kerala are at risk of experiencing fatal or non-fatal heart attacks and other cardio-vascular events-the highest in any Indian state, country's biggest cardio-vascular mapping exercise has revealed.
The study carried out by Pascal Geldsetzer and Rifat Atun of Harvard University and other researchers from India, Germany and South Africa has also said that the risk factor for this group of diseases is highest among urban as well as rural Keralites.
The risk of diseases like stroke, heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases range is also very high in other southern states and is lowest in Jharkhand at 13.2 per cent. CVD is the leading cause of mortality in India-killing nearly 1.7 million Indians annually, yet evidence on the risk factors for the condition among India's population is limited authors said.
In the new study, researchers used two large household surveys carried out between 2012 and 2014, which sampled 797,540 adults aged 30 to 74 years across India. CVD risk was examined using established risk scores by state, rural or urban residence, age, sex, household wealth, and education.
The study has also shown that people living in urban areas and those with high household incomes and education face relatively higher risks of cardiovascular disease and the researchers hope that the findings that can facilitate effective targeting of CVD programs to those most at risk and most in need.
Overall, the mean 10-year risk of a CVD event in the population aged 30-74 years was 12.7 per cent among females and 21.4 per cent among males, the research paper published in Plos Medicine says. It adds that the age-standardized state-level mean 10-year CVD risk across all age groups varied from 10.2% per cent among females in Assam to 24.2 among males in Nagaland.
Similarly, the age-standardized prevalence of a high CVD risk varied from 5 per cent among females in Assam to 30.4 per cent among males in Kerala. Among both males and females, CVD risk tended to be highest in South India (including Goa), the 3 most northern states - (Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttarakhand- the north-eastern states (except Assam), and West Bengal (particularly among males).
"This pattern across states, as well as the wide degree of variation in CVD risk between states, largely remained when examining state-level prevalence within only certain age groups and within rural and urban areas," the study notes.