Neglecting your heart health in young adulthood could set you up for heart disease later

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-10-07 02:00

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People whose heart health declines through young adulthood are likely at increased risk of developing heart disease later in life, according to international research. The researchers recruited 4241 young adults in the US and tested their heart health at three different points during their young adult life - looking both at their behaviours such as diet and exercise, as well as their BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. The researchers say compared to participants who consistently had a high health score, those whose cardiovascular health declined over the three check-ups had up to a 9.96 times higher risk of developing heart disease later in life.

Media release

From: JAMA

In this prospective cohort study of young adults, unfavorable patterns of cardiovascular health (CVH) change through young adulthood were associated with marked elevations in risk for incident cardiovascular disease (CVD). These data suggest that achieving and maintaining high CVH throughout young adulthood through strategies of primordial prevention are important for prevention of later-life CVD.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Harvard Medical School, USA, Boston University, USA

Funder: This study was supported in part by scholarship award AWD00000263 from the American Heart Association (Dr Guo) and the Research Intensive Scholarly Emphasis (RISE) Medical Student Fellowship from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (Dr Guo). The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (CARDIA) is conducted and supported by grants 75N92023D00002 and 75N92023D00005 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in collaboration with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, grant 75N92023D00004 in collaboration with Northwestern University, grant 75N92023D00006 in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, and grant 75N92023D00003 in collaboration with the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute.

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