A recent Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA has found that 1 in 7 U.S. adults between the ages of 30 and 59 years have a high 30-year risk for cardiovascular disease.

The findings emphasise the importance of calculating both short-term and long-term risk for cardiovascular disease in young adults in primary care settings, said Sadiya Khan, '09 MD, '14 MSc, '10, '12 GME, the Magerstadt Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology and senior author of the study.

"While short-term or 10-year risk has been our standard of care, this analysis reflects an important shift in preventive cardiology and helps to raise public awareness that risk for heart disease can be detected even in young adults," said Khan, who is also an associate professor of Medical Social Sciences in the Division of Determinants of Health and of Preventive Medicine in the Division of Epidemiology.

More than 28 million U.S. adults currently have cardiovascular disease, according to recent data from the American Heart Association, a figure that is expected to increase. Preventive measures currently rely on short-term risk assessments over a 10-year time span, which does not reflect a younger person's risk of developing heart disease long-term, according to Khan.

In the current study, Khan's team aimed to estimate the number of U.S. adults with high 10- and 30-year cardiovascular disease risk.

Using the American Heart Association's Predicting Risk of CVD EVENTs (PREVENT) model, the investigators calculated 10-year and 30-year cardiovascular disease risk in adults aged 30 to 59 years.

The study sample included more than 9,700 participants aged 30 to 59 years without cardiovascular disease, representing approximately 101 million U.S. adults. Participants who were pregnant or who already had cardiovascular disease were excluded from the study.

Participants were then divided into three groups based on their 10-year and 30-year risk scores: low short-term risk paired with low long-term risk; low short-term risk alongside high long-term risk; or high short-term risk.

The scientists found that while 10-year prediction models indicated that most adults aged 30 to 59 years had a low 10-year cardiovascular disease risk, approximately 1 in 7 adults had a high 30-year risk.

"This helps demonstrate the importance of calculating both long-term and short-term risk when seeing a patient in primary care to communicate a more comprehensive assessment of the person's risk of developing heart disease. If a younger person has a higher-risk 30-year CVD score, earlier interventions and emphasis on preventive measures should be considered to potentially improve CVD outcomes," Khan said.

Khan added that follow-up studies will seek to understand how best to reduce risk in those identified with increased 30-year risk and identify physical activity interventions or dietary patterns that may help lower disease risk.