by People under 55 with high cholesterol and blood pressure may have an elevated risk of heart disease later in life, even if they manage to control their levels long-term. This has been seen in research published in the magazine ‘PLoS‘made from the data of the UK Biobankwhich has included more than 300,000 people.
The results, write the Australian researchers from the Nelson Wang University of New South Wales, the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the university of sydneysupport the importance of lifelong risk factor control in young individuals, whose risk of heart disease accumulates over time.
The high levels of LDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure. They remain the main global contributors to coronary heart disease.
In this work, the researchers carried out a Mendelian randomization study in 136,648 participants for LDL cholesterol, in 135,431 participants for systolic blood pressure and 24,052 cases of coronary heart disease in order to evaluate the effect of the duration of exposure to Risk factors in the risk of heart disease.
The mendelian randomization studies They use genetic variants to investigate the causal relationship between a biomarker (such as cholesterol and hypertension) and disease risk (such as cardiovascular disease).
Currently, therapeutic strategies to reduce cholesterol and hypertension are based on short-term clinical trials. If longer exposure to elevated cholesterol and blood pressure has a cumulative effect, as reported by Mendelian randomization studies, this would have important implications for the management of cardiovascular disease, the authors write.
Early treatment
In this sense, he adds, there could be a role for early treatment in lower-risk and younger patients if there really are additional benefits with cumulative control of risk factors.
The results are now published in ‘PLoS‘shows that there is a consistent association between exposure to high levels of LDL cholesterol and hypertension that leads to an increase in the odds of cardiovascular disease in people under 55 years of age, regardless of whether they subsequently control for these conditions.
