A new risk score is intended to help predict the 10-year risk of developing heart disease or having a stroke in individuals aged 40 years or older in any world country, according to recent research.

The study appears in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal and was led by Goodarz Danaei, MD, ScD, assistant professor of Global Health at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

During the study, a news release from The Lancet states that Danaei and colleagues developed, validated, and evaluated the new score, known as Globorisk, using data from eight cohort studies1, including more than 50,000 participants. Globorisk can be updated to fit local conditions and risk factor levels in different countries using routinely available information, the release says,

Globorisk is designed to measure cardiovascular risk in individuals aged 40 years or older by factoring in the individual’s smoking status, blood pressure, diabetes status, and total cholesterol level, while adjusting for the effects of sex and age on cardiovascular disease between countries.

The release notes researchers recalibrated and applied their risk score to 11 countries from different world regions2 using data from recent national health surveys to replace the average age-and-sex risk factor levels in each country and incorporating cardiovascular disease death rates for each age-and-sex group. The researchers developed country-specific risk charts for predicting individuals’ risk of cardiovascular disease and country-specific assessments of the 10-year cardiovascular disease burden.

It was estimated that the proportion of individuals facing a high risk (10% or higher) of having a fatal heart attack or stroke within 10 years is higher in low- and middle-income countries (eg, China and Mexico) compared to high-income countries (eg, South Korea, Spain, and Denmark).

Danaei emphasizes in the release “Globorisk can be used to identify individuals at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease who are most likely to benefit from lifestyle changes or preventive drug treatment. Moreover, by estimating the number of people who have a high risk in any given country we have more chance of accurately measuring progress towards the WHO target of 50% coverage of multidrug treatment and counseling for people aged 40 years and older at high risk of cardiovascular disease.3

 Footnotes:

  1. Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities, Cardiovascular Health Study, Framingham Heart Study original cohort, Framingham Heart Study offspring cohort, Honolulu Heart Program, Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, Puerto Rico Heart Health Program, and Women’s Health Initiative Clinical Trial.

  2. China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Iran, Japan, Malawi, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, and the USA.

  3. Quotes direct from authors and cannot be found in text of Article / Comment

 

Source(s): Science Daily, The Lancet