Heart diseases: People in Kerala at highest risk, says study
NEW DELHI: India’s biggest cardio-vascular mapping exercise has revealed that about 20 of 100 adults over 30 years in age in Kerala are at risk of suffering fatal or non-fatal heart attacks and other cardiovascular events, the highest in any state.
According to the study, done by Pascal Geldsetzer and Rifat Atun of Harvard University and other researchers from India, Germany and South Africa, the risk factor for this group of diseases is highest among urban as well as rural Keralites.
The risk of strokes, heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is very high in other southern states too. It is the lowest in Jharkhand, at 13.2 per cent.
Although CVD is the leading cause of mortality in India, killing nearly 1.7 million people annually, evidence on the risk factors for the condition among India’s population is limited, the study pointed out.
For the study, the researchers used two large household surveys done between 2012 and 2014, which sampled 797,540 adults aged 30-74 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 found that people living in urban areas and those with high household incomes and education face relatively higher risks of cardiovascular disease. The researchers hope their findings 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 among people aged 30-74 years was 12.7 per cent among females and 21.4 per cent among males, the paper published in Plos Medicine said.
The age-standardised state-level mean 10-year CVD risk across all age groups varied from 10.2 per cent among women in Assam to 24.2 per cent among men in Nagaland.
Similarly, the age-standardised prevalence of high CVD risk varied from 5 per cent among females in Assam to 30.4 per cent among males in Kerala. Among both men and women, CVD risk tended to be the highest in south India (including Goa), the three northern states of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttarakhand, the north-eastern states (except Assam), and West Bengal (particularly among men).
“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 noted.