One of these four red flags is seen before 99.6% of heart attacks

https://newatlas.com/heart-disease/heart-attack-red-flags/

by westurner • 10 months ago

21 5 10 months ago

Researchers from Northwestern Medicine and Yonsei University pooled the health data of 9,341,100 South Korean adults, as well as 6,803 US adults, looking at four key risk factors: high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood-sugar levels and smoking. They found that – in both cohorts – more than 99% of people who suffered coronary heart disease (CHD) had problematic levels of at least one of the four risk factors.

westurner• 10 months ago

Those specific risk factors, the data revealed, were:
- Blood pressure ≥120/80 mm Hg or on treatment
- Total cholesterol ≥200 mg/dL or on treatment
- Fasting glucose ≥100 mg/dL, diagnosis of diabetes or on treatment
- Past or current tobacco use

ScholarlyArticle: "Very High Prevalence of Nonoptimally Controlled Traditional Risk Factors at the Onset of Cardiovascular Disease" (2025) https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2025.07.014

tailspin2019• 10 months ago

I don’t understand how correlation/causation errors are mitigated here…

Surely more than 99.6% of people “inhaled air” before a heart attack too.

I’m sure there must be more to it but the way this is reported doesn’t make sense at all.

Would have been useful to mention what % of people had one or more of these “red flags” and didn’t have a heart attack.

dooglius• 10 months ago

You're talking about a base rate fallacy, which is a different thing than correlation/causation errors. (Both are potentially problems given the high-level description of the study, the full text of which is behind a paywall)

hollandheese• 10 months ago

What percent of the population as a whole has at least one of these "red flags"? I'd suspect that at least a vast majority of Americans have at least one of these, especially when the Blood Pressure measurement is still within the normal range.

One of these four red flags is seen before 99.6% of heart attacks

Related Stories