One third deaths worldwide due to cardiovascular diseases

In an alarming threat to global health, one in three deaths worldwide is caused by cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including heart diseases and stroke, a study has revealed. The researchers looked at the prevalence of CVD from 1990 to 2010 and found that CVD mortality first increased, then declined steeply with increasing SDI, only to plateau in the last few years.

In 1990, there were about 393 deaths for every 1,00,000 people from CVD globally. That fell to 307 deaths per 1,00,000 in 2010 and over the next five years, decreased slightly to 286 deaths per 1,00,000. From 1990 to 2010, the age standardised death rate from CVD dropped globally, driven by improvements in high income countries, but that progress has slowed over the last five years.

In 2015, there were more than 400 million individuals living with CVD and nearly 18 million CVD deaths worldwide. "It is an alarming threat to global health. Trends in CVD mortality are no longer declining for high income regions and low and middle income countries are also seeing more CVD related deaths," said Gregory Roth, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.

"Risk factors for CVD, like high blood pressure, poor diet, high cholesterol, tobacco smoking, excessive alcohol use, and obesity, are common throughout most of the world," Roth added, in the paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

With an estimated 7.3 million heart attacks and 110.6 million people living with heart artery disease in 2015, ischemic heart disease, also known as coronary artery or heart artery disease was found to be the leading cause of health loss in every region of the world. Stroke was the second leading cause of global health loss, with nearly 9 million first-time strokes, worldwide in 2015.

The highest CVD death rates occurred throughout Central Asia and Eastern Europe, but also in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and many South Pacific island nations, while the lowest were in Japan, Andorra, Peru, France, Israel, and Spain.