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  • Review Article
  • Published:

Epidemiology of cardiovascular disease in young individuals

Nature Reviews Cardiology volume 15, pages 230–240 (2018)Cite this article

Subjects

Key Points

  • Young adults (aged 18–45 years) have developed increasingly unhealthy risk factors over the past 2 decades, including obesity, poor diet, and physical inactivity

  • In contrast to older adults, growing evidence in young adults shows that trends in incident cardiovascular disease (especially heart failure) have been increasing or stagnating over the past few decades

  • Current observations forecast a new epidemic of cardiovascular disease in this young segment of the population as they age

  • Data on incident cardiovascular disease in young adults are scarce, and estimates are associated with wide confidence intervals owing to the low absolute number of individuals in this population with cardiovascular disease

  • More data are therefore needed (especially harmonized data between various studies) to establish the epidemiology and trends in overt cardiovascular diseases in young adults

Abstract

In the past 2 decades, a high prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as obesity, physical inactivity, and poor diet, has been observed among young individuals living in developed countries. The rate of substance abuse (opioids, cocaine, electronic cigarettes, and anabolic steroids) is also increasing among young adults, whereas cigarette smoking might be declining. Among younger individuals (aged 18–50 years), the incidence of cardiovascular diseases over the same time period has either been steady or has increased, in contrast to the trend towards a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease in adults aged >50 years. Current observations might, therefore, be used to forecast a potential epidemic of cardiovascular disease in the near future as the younger segment of the population ages. In this Review, we discuss the burden of risk factors for ischaemic heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and sudden cardiac death among young adults aged 18–45 years. Furthermore, we discuss the prevalence, incidence, and temporal trends of various cardiovascular diseases among this young segment of the population.

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Figure 1: Levels of various risk factors stratified by age groups (20–49 years and ≥50 years) in the NHANES6.
Figure 2: Incidence of sudden cardiac death in young adults in the US Department of Defense Cardiovascular Death Registry.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Evans Medical Foundation and Jay and Louise Coffman Foundation at the Boston University School of Medicine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Framingham Heart Study, 73 Mount Wayte Avenue, Framingham, 01702–5827, Massachusetts, USA

    Charlotte Andersson & Ramachandran S. Vasan

  2. Department of Cardiology, Herlev and Gentofte Hospital, Niels Andersens Road 65, Hellerup, 2900, Denmark

    Charlotte Andersson

  3. Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, 800 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, 02118, Massachusetts, USA

    Ramachandran S. Vasan

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  1. Charlotte Andersson
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Both authors researched data for the article, discussed its content, wrote the manuscript, and reviewed and edited it before submission.

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Correspondence to Charlotte Andersson.

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Andersson, C., Vasan, R. Epidemiology of cardiovascular disease in young individuals. Nat Rev Cardiol 15, 230–240 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2017.154

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