Diabetes and obesity are rising among young adults in the United States, an alarming development that puts them at higher risk for heart disease, according to a study of 13,000 people between 20 and 44 years old.
The authors of the study, published in March in a major medical journal, warn the trends could have major public health implications: a rising generation dying prematurely of heart attacks, strokes and other complications. And Black and Hispanic people, particularly Mexican Americans, would bear the brunt.
“We’re witnessing a smoldering public health crisis,” Rishi K. Wadhera, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the study authors, wrote in an email.
Deaths from heart attacks and other effects of cardiovascular illnesses have been declining in the United States because of medical advances in prevention and treatment. That progress stagnated during the past decade.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, aimed to examine whether young adults were increasingly at risk, using data between 2009 and 2020.
The results were mixed. There was a rise in obesity (from 33 percent to 41 percent) and diabetes (from 3 percent to 4 percent). Hypertension showed no meaningful improvement: It rose slightly, from 9 percent to 11.5 percent, but the increase did not quite reach statistical significance.
Hyperlipidemia — high levels of cholesterol or triglycerides — declined from 40.5 percent to 26 percent.
Younger Blacks have the biggest risk
Young Black adults face the greatest risk. Hypertension is twice as prevalent among them as it is in other racial and ethnic groups. Diabetes and obesity are also more common.
The study’s authors pinpointed structural racial inequities in American society as a driver of the gaps.
“Younger Black individuals are more likely to live in lower-income households that experience housing instability and food insecurity,…
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