According to a new study led by the researchers of University College London have suggested that social situation of an individual plays a key role, in order to assess their risk of heart attack in the future. Researchers noted that factors including physical activity, employment, educational qualifications, mental health, marital status, and BMI can play an important role in identifying who is most at risk of heart disease. Moreover, these factors further aided to find alter treatment decisions, such as an individual is eligible for statins (preventative drugs) or not.
Dr. Taavi Tillmann, Lead author from UCL Institute of Global Health stated, “Our study suggests that in terms of risk prediction, simple questionnaire measures on behavioral and psychosocial factors may be as informative as established biomedical risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol. Secondly, this discovery may allow some people to undertake sophisticated health checks fully online without leaving their house at all, which is well-timed given the ongoing risks of COVID-19.”
In the study, researchers’ assessed data of 20,000 participants across different parts of Europe who were a part of cohort studies that started before 10 years. Later after 10 years, researchers identified which participants developed heart diseases and who did not. In the study, researchers compared the accuracy of the predication model with the help of original data form a decade ago, and identified which risk predication model was more accurate, which involved traditional SCORE model, or a newly developed HAPIEE-SCORE model by the researchers. Lastly it was found that the HAPIEE-SCORE predication model performed better in all aspects.
Researchers conclude that the research findings now provide public health experts and clinicians’ novel validated risk prediction algorithms, and also strengthens the claim that psychosocial factors can have real life consequence.