Cardiovascular risk profile for 10 years may be too short-sighted
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Individuals who need to control their risk of a heart attack or stroke can buy Canadian Plavix at a fraction of what it costs in the U.S. While a doctor can calculate a person's risk for such events over the next 10 years, research from Northwestern University suggests that these assessments do not look far enough into the future.
A team of scientists reviewed data collected from more than 250,000 individuals over the course of five decades. They investigated the impact of common heart risk factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and diabetes. Assessments were made when patients were aged 45, 55, 65 and 75.
Results showed that the chance of 45-year-old men who were optimal for all risk measurements experiencing a heart attack or stroke was 1.4 percent. Having at least two risk factors bumped those odds to 49.5 percent. For 45-year-old women, those figures were 4.1 and 30.7 percent, respectively.
"Just even one small increase in risk, from all optimal risk factors to one that isn't optimal, like slightly elevated cholesterol or blood pressure, significantly bumps up a person's lifetime risk," said researcher Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, who added that it is important for people to maintain healthy lifestyles in order to prevent the development of disease in the first place.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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