Rising Risk Factors

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death

(Family Features) While medical advances have helped people live longer with cardiovascular diseases, many of the risk factors that lead to these diseases continue to grow.

Fueled by ongoing increases in high blood pressure, obesity and other major risk factors, heart disease continues to kill more people in the U.S. than any other cause, according to the American Heart Association’s 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update. In fact, cardiovascular diseases including heart disease and stroke claim more lives than all forms of cancer and accidental deaths – the No. 2 and No. 3 causes of death – combined.

According to the update, nearly 47% of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, more than 72% are at an unhealthy weight, nearly 42% are obese and more than half have Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.

The annual report published in “Circulation,” the peer-reviewed, flagship journal of the American Heart Association, shows the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors are projected to worsen over the coming decades.

“Although we have made a lot of progress against cardiovascular disease in the past few decades, there is a lot more work that remains to be done,”

said Dhruv S. Kazi, M.D., M.Sc., M.S., FAHA, head of health economics and associated director of the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “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. Over the same time period, we expect to see a 300% increase in health care costs related to cardiovascular disease.”

Prevalence for major risk factors varies across sex and race:

• Black women had the highest rate of obesity at 57.9%, compared to the lowest rate of 14.5% among Asian women.
• Hispanic men had the highest rate of diabetes at 14.5%, compared to the lowest rate of 7.7% among white women.
• Black women had the highest rate of high blood pressure at 58.4%, compared to the lowest rate of 35.3% among Hispanic women.

The prevalence of these risk factors – obesity in particular – is growing among young people globally. As many as 40% of U.S. children have an unhealthy weight with 20% having obesity. Nearly 60% of adults globally have an unhealthy weight.

Long considered one of the leading preventable causes of death in the U.S. and worldwide, tobacco use is also trending down. Smoking rates have steadily declined among both adults and youth since the U.S. Surgeon General’s first report on the dangers of smoking from 51% of men and 34% of women in 1965 to 15.6% and 12%, respectively, in 2018.

To find the full report and more advice for healthy living, visit heart.org.