18% of the Australian adult population lives with cardiovascular disease (CVD), causing one in four deaths in Australia.
Though CVD related deaths have decreased over the last 10 years, largely due to increasing health awareness, increased prevention and understanding of CVD and atherosclerosis over a persons lifetime is critical to decrease this disease burden.
In large global cohort studies, paediatric cardiovascular risk factors have been shown to predict adult cardiovascular risk of both fatal and non-fatal events.
This sub-project aims to identify the cardiovascular risk profile of the ORIGINS cohort, identifying the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and social and environmental factors known to be associated with these risk factors.
Identifying risk factors, like known medical conditions, smoking exposure, high blood lipids or glucose, high BMI, low physical activity, or having a family history of early heart attacks or strokes, means that doctors and researchers can try and alter these risk factors, or change how they manage these risks over a patients life.
This begins in childhood. Identifying these risk factors ORIGINS allows the research team to look at other associated risks, and do future studies to try and change these risks.
As adult CVD remains one of the leading non-communicable diseases causing mortality in Australia and the world, understanding the childhood risk and it's relation to adult disease is imperative to reducing NCD burden.
Investigators
- Dr Edward Justo, Perth Children's Hospital
- Dr Andrew Martin, Perth Children's Hospital