Coronary heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes can affect anyone – men and women. In the UK, 270 000 people have a heart attack every year, and 130 000 people have a first stroke. But not everyone’s risk of these diseases is the same – ethnic differences in these conditions are striking.

Compared with British whites, British South Asians have increased risks of coronary heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance, and death rates from coronary heart disease and stroke are about 50 per cent higher. In contrast, British African Caribbeans tend to have markedly higher blood pressure and increased risk of stroke, but death rates from coronary heart disease are about 50 per cent lower.

There has been great interest in the possibility that risk of these chronic diseases starts to emerge early in life; preliminary recent studies have suggested that ethnic differences in precursors of cardiovascular and diabetes risk are apparent in childhood.

At St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, Professor Whincup is studying 5000 British children (South Asian, African Caribbean and white) aged 9–10 in London, Leicester and Birmingham to examine whether ethnic differences in cardiovascular and diabetes risk precursors are present in childhood, and what factors might be influencing them. The study will be sufficiently large to provide separate information on children of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origins separately. Particular attention will be given to the roles of childhood obesity, fetal and childhood growth, childhood lifestyle (particularly physical exercise and diet) and the role of genetic factors.

See also

• Limiting damage from lack of oxygen
• The heart in Greek medicine and philosophy
• Genes that control the asymmetry of the heart
• The virtual heart
• Scientists in cardiovascular harmony
• Cardiovascular disease in Eastern Europe

External links

• St George’s Hospital Medical School