Decline in Cardiovascular Mortality: Possible Causes and Implications.

Decline in Cardiovascular Mortality: Possible Causes and Implications. Circ Res. 2017 Jan 20;120(2):366-380 Authors: Mensah GA, Wei GS, Sorlie PD, Fine LJ, Rosenberg Y, Kaufmann PG, Mussolino ME, Hsu LL, Addou E, Engelgau MM, Gordon D Abstract If the control of infectious diseases was the public health success story of the first half of the 20th century, then the decline in mortality from coronary heart disease and stroke has been the success story of the century's past 4 decades. The early phase of this decline in coronary heart disease and stroke was unexpected and controversial when first reported in the mid-1970s, having followed 60 years of gradual increase as the US population aged. However, in 1978, the participants in a conference convened by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute concluded that a significant recent downtick in coronary heart disease and stroke mortality rates had definitely occurred, at least in the US Since 1978, a sharp decline in mortality rates from coronary heart disease and stroke has become unmistakable throughout the industrialized world, with age-adjusted mortality rates having declined to about one third of their 1960s baseline by 2000. Models have shown that this remarkable decline has been fueled by rapid progress in both prevention and treatment, including precipitous declines in cigarette smoking, improvements in hypertension treatment and control, widespread use of statins to lower circ...
Source: Circulation Research - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Circ Res Source Type: research