In a new study from Northwestern University, researchers found risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking conferred a greater risk of heart failure in young and middle-aged people as compared to older people.
Heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalization for people over the age of 65, part of why it’s typically considered an aging-related disease by clinicians.
However, the past decade has seen an increasing number of cases in younger and middle-aged people, necessitating a closer examination of risk factors in this population.
In the study, the team analyzed data from three large epidemiological studies. The population examined in the current study totaled nearly 25,000 people.
Over a follow-up of 12.7 years, about 1% of patients under 55, 10% of patients aged 55 to 64 and 18% of patients 65 and older developed heart failure.
Risk factors including high blood pressure, diabetes, current smoking history and previous myocardial infarction conferred greater relative risk in younger compared with older participants.
For example, hypertension was associated with a 3-time increase in the risk of future heart failure in young participants, compared with a 1.4-time risk in elderly participants.
These findings highlight the importance of interventions—such as a new anti-obesity medication studied at Northwestern—that can help mitigate these risk factors in young and middle-aged patients.
The team says with younger people, doctors have a greater opportunity to intervene and prevent heart failure.
They need to educate patients that they might not only develop obesity or diabetes but heart failure—which is life-changing.
If you care about heart failure, please read studies about a big cause of heart failure and findings of this diabetes drug may increase risk of heart failure.
For more information about heart failure and your health, please see recent studies about this common health issue in middle-age may predict heart failure later in life and results showing that drinking coffee may help reduce heart failure risk.
The study is published in the BMJ. One author of the study is Sanjiv Shah, M.D.
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