Several factors increase the risk of heart attack, such as high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), obesity, abnormal cholesterol levels, high blood pressure (hypertension), and smoking. A study conducted in Brazil and reported in an article published in the journal PLOS ONE measured the impact of these factors. The researchers analyzed data for the Brazilian population collected between 2005 and 2017, determining the number of deaths attributed to each risk factor. The aim of the study was to contribute to the development of more effective strategies to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular diseases, which have long been the leading causes of death in Brazil.
The study, which was supported by FAPESP, quantified the impact of each factor associated with death from cardiovascular disease. Hyperglycemia correlated five to 10 times more than other factors.
The dataset came from government sources such as the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Development and IBGE, the national statistics bureau, as well as foreign sources such as the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) and the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
"Regardless of the control we used – and we tested variables, statistical models and methods of different kinds – diabetes was also associated with mortality from cardiovascular disease. Moreover, the association was not confined to the year analyzed but lasted for up to a decade," said Renato Gaspar, one of the authors supported by FAPESP. Gaspar is conducting postdoctoral research at the Vascular Biology Laboratory of the Heart Institute (InCor) attached to the University of São Paulo's Medical School (FM-USP).
Previous research established an equation to calculate the number of deaths prevented or deferred by changes in risk factors. Based on this, the researchers calculated the "premature" mortality rate compared with average life expectancy, concluding that some 5,000 people would not have…