After being followed for up to half a century in the world’s
largest international prospective cardiovascular disease study, researchers
discovered five childhood risk factors that can predict stroke and heart attack
in adulthood.

Reported in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’, the researchers
discovered that BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides (a form of fat
present in the blood), and youth smoking, especially in combination in early
infancy, were clinically associated to cardiovascular events from as early as
40 years of age.

“Despite the effect medical and surgical care has had on
treating heart disease, the major impact will depend on effective preventive
strategies. This study confirms that prevention should begin in childhood,”
remarked senior study author Terence Dwyer.

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“Longitudinal studies like these have been hampered by a lack
of inclusion of comprehensive childhood data around body measurements, blood
pressure, and blood lipids and a failure to follow-up at ages when the
cardiovascular disease becomes common,” Dwyer added. “Studying early
life influences on disease has always been put in the too-hard basket. But
researchers in i3C took up this challenge because we knew the potential
benefits to human health at the end could be very substantial.”

The study included 38,589 participants from Australia, Finland and
the United States, who were followed for 35-50 years from the age of 3-19.

According to Dwyer, the five risk factors present in childhood,
either separately or in combination, were predictors of fatal and non-fatal
cardiovascular events. The findings revealed that over half of the children
investigated were at risk for adult cardiovascular events, with some having a
risk nine times higher than those with below-average risk factors.

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Dwyer said “while this evidence had not been available
previously, the findings were not entirely surprising as it had been known for
some time that children as young as five already showed early signs of fatty
deposits in arteries. This new evidence justified a greater emphasis on
programs to prevent the development of these risk factors in children.
Clinicians and public health professionals should now start to focus on how
this might best be achieved.”

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“While interventions in adulthood like improving diet, quitting
smoking, being more active, and taking appropriate medications to reduce risk
factors are helpful, it is likely that there is much more that can be done
during childhood and adolescence to reduce lifetime risk of cardiovascular
disease,” he concluded.