Heart Disease Starts Early in Life

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A second report on 824 young adults in the study (average age 36) concerned potentially dangerous changes in heart structure over time, such as left ventricular hypertrophy, or overgrowth of one heart chamber. "The heart starts to get big, dilated," Berenson said. "It also becomes concentric, and the muscle walls are thick."

Such cardiac abnormalities were more common in adults who had diabetes and high blood pressure in childhood. But the major cause was obesity, Berenson said.

"Obesity in childhood is the only consistent factor predicting cardiac enlargement in adults," he said. "It also predicts adult vascular stiffness." That is a formal medical term for what most people call hardening of the arteries.

"These observations give a compelling reason for pursuing preventive, personalized intervention strategies at an early age in order to evaluate obesity and underlying cardiovascular disease risk factors," Berenson said in a statement.

Dr. Keith Ferdinand, a clinical professor of medicine at Emory University and a board member of the American Society of Hypertension, called the new findings important because they show that "heart disease and hypertension start early in life, in adolescence and even in the pre-teen years."

"In clinical medicine, we focus on patients who have documented heart disease and left ventricular hypertrophy," Ferdinand said. "Based on this new research, which confirms prior findings, in order to decrease the rates of hypertension and heart disease, we should target our young people."

The racial disparities seen in the study "are probably due to early and younger exposure to an adverse lifestyles, including less intake of fruits and vegetables and high intake of salty foods," he said.

More information

Learn more about prehypertension from the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.