• Posted January 28, 2025

Heart Health Risk Factors Continue To Increase

Major heart health risk factors like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure remain on the rise in the United States, according to an annual report from the American Heart Association (AHA).

These risks are thwarting efforts to save lives from heart disease, heart attack, stroke and other lethal heart-related diseases, says the report published Jan. 27 in the AHA journal Circulation.

Overall, there was a slight increase in heart-related deaths in 2022, the most recent year for which final data is available, the 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics report says.

There were 941,652 heart-related deaths in 2022, an increase of more than 10,000 from the 931,578 deaths in 2021.

The report indicates that heart-related deaths appear to be leveling out after a major uptick during the COVID pandemic, the report says -- but heart disease remains the No. 1 killer in the U.S.

Someone dies of heart disease every 34 seconds, amounting to nearly 2,500 people every day, noted Dr. Keith Churchwell, volunteer president of the American Heart Association.

“Those are alarming statistics to me -- and they should be alarming for all of us, because it’s likely many among those whom we lose will be our friends and loved ones,” Churchwell said in a news release.

He noted that heart disease and stroke together kill more people than all cancers and accidental deaths -- the No. 2 and No. 3  causes of death -- combined.

Headway against heart disease is slowing because “trends in important cardiovascular risk factors are headed in the wrong direction, particularly for obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure,” said an accompanying editorial written by Dr. Dhruv Kazi, head of health economics and associate director of the Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Nearly 47% of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, the report says. More than 72% have unhealthy weight, with nearly 42% having full-fledged obesity. And more than half (57%) have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.

“If recent trends continue, hypertension and obesity will each affect more than 180 million U.S. adults by 2050, whereas the prevalence of diabetes will climb to more than 80 million,” Kazi wrote.

Risk factors for heart disease also show important disparities, placing some groups at more peril than others. The report found that:

• Black women had the highest rate of obesity at 58%, compared to the lowest rate of 15% among Asian women.

• Hispanic men had the highest rate of diabetes at 15% compared to 8% among white women.

• Black women had the highest rate of high blood pressure at 58% compared to 35% among Hispanic women.

Excess weight alone “lowers life expectancy by as much as 2.4 years compared to a healthy weight,” vice-chair of the AHA’s statistical update writing committee, Dr. Latha Palaniappan, said in a news release.

“The impact on lives lost is twice as high for women, and higher for Black adults than for white adults,” said Palaniappan, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University. “It’s alarming to note that excess weight now costs us even more lives than smoking – as smoking rates have actually fallen in recent years.”

“Being overweight is the new smoking when it comes to health threats,” Palaniappan concluded.

In fact, smoking continued to decline in the U.S., marking one of the bright spots in the fight against heart disease, the report noted.

Just under 12% of adults currently smoke cigarettes, the report says. Smoking rates have declined among men from 51% in 1965 to just under 16% in 2018, and from 34% among women in 1965 to 12% in 2018.

“Another positive trend over the years has been a reduction in the rates of high cholesterol,” Churchwell added. “That’s likely thanks, in part, to increased awareness about the dietary and lifestyle factors that impact cholesterol levels, along with the availability of medications and better clinical control.”

Fighting heart disease won’t just save lives, but money as well, the report pointed out.

The U.S. spent $418 billion on health care related to heart disease in 2020-2021, accounting for 11% of the nation’s total health care spending, Kazi noted in his editorial.

If trends hold, “we expect to see a 300% increase health care costs related to cardiovascular disease” by 2050, Kazi said.

“Recent projections suggest that CVD-related costs are expected to triple between 2020 and 2050, when they will constitute almost 5% of the national gross domestic product,” he wrote.

New drugs to battle obesity and other risk factors are either already available or on the horizon, but these often-expensive breakthrough therapies won’t necessarily get to the people who need them most, the report says.

“The disparities in risk and outcomes call for tailored interventions among high-risk populations,” Kazi said. “Simply discovering breakthrough therapies isn’t going to be enough – we have to ensure that these therapies are accessible and affordable to people who need them most.”

More information

The American Heart Association has more on its 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics report.

SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, Jan. 27, 2025