The last century has seen the most significant health changes in history for most populations. Life expectancy at birth has risen from a 46-year global average in 1950 to 66 years in 1998. Human societies’ health status and disease profile have traditionally been linked to the extent of their economic growth and social organization. In more advanced countries, with industrialization, the primary causes of death and disability have changed from the predominance of food disorders and infectious diseases to those identified as degenerative, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and diabetes. The Journal of the American College of Cardiology published an analysis of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Report 2019 in partnership with the Global Burden of Disease and the NHLBI, which identified the current global environment for the burden of Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and its risk factors and highlighted the existing challenges in the treatment and prevention of CVD. The key statistics from this study are:

• CVD was the underlying cause of death in 9.6 million men and 8.9 million women.
• 6.1 million CVD deaths among theses occurred between the ages of 30 and 70 years. 
• The highest rate of CVD death was present in China
• High BP was the prevalent modifiable risk factor for CVD.

Some of the predominant CVDs: 

• Rheumatic heart disease, infections, and nutritional cardiomyopathies.
• hypertensive heart disease and hemorrhagic strokes.
• All forms of strokes, ischemic heart disease at young ages, increasing obesity, and diabetes.
• Stroke and ischemic heart disease at old age.
• Re-emergence of deaths from rheumatic heart disease, infections, increased alcoholism, and violence; increase in ischemic and hypertensive diseases in the young.

Risk factors that increase the burden of cardiovascular disease

It is possible to narrowly classify reasons for the burden of Cardiovascular diseases into four groups: social determinants, lifestyle variables, biochemical factors, and genetic factors. Urbanization (rapid, low quality), industrialization (unplanned), illiteracy, poverty, unemployment and working conditions, housing, outdoor air pollution, maternal nutrition, and health system quality are the social determinants. Sedentary lifestyle, Misuse of alcohol, Air-pollution indoors dietary conditions, smoking, and cigarettes are lifestyle variables. High blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, lipoprotein, reduced glucose tolerance, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, are biochemical factors that threaten the increased risk of CVD. And genes related to particular diseases such as lipid disorders, hypertension, diabetes, etc., or inflammatory and thrombogenic genes and epigenetic factors.