Crowded Credit: Robert Molinarius on flickr
Population studies on a vast scale are providing the power to provide accurate risk assessment - and intervention - into cardiovascular disease. —Professor John Danesh - Scientists have learned a great deal about the risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), the group of conditions that includes heart disease and stroke and which kills one in three people in the UK, through studying the health of large numbers of people. But, as new risk factors emerge, how can clinicians know what to include in an accurate assessment of an individual's risk of CVD? Moreover, which risk factors are causal, and therefore directions for potential intervention, as opposed to simply being associated with the onset of disease? The answers are in the numbers. By conducting an analysis on a scale never attempted before, Professor John Danesh and his team at the University of Cambridge's Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit (CEU) in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care are gaining new insights into the causes of, and potential interventions into, CVD. Bigger is better. Since the late 1940s, when the Framingham Heart Study in the USA first undertook the ambitious task of following the development of CVD in a large group of individuals over a long period of time (originally around 5,000 healthy men and women), many longitudinal population studies into CVD have been conducted across the world. Each strives to understand, predict and prevent a global epidemic that currently causes 17 million deaths per year.
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