Risk factors
Risk factors make you more likely to develop heart and circulatory diseases. The BHF has information to help you reduce them.
BHF-funded research has shown that Black Africans, African Caribbeans and South Asians in the UK are at higher risk of developing high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes compared with White Europeans. We need to understand why this is the case so we can beat heartbreak for everyone.
How can ethnic background affect disease risk?
We funded work led by Professor Sir Michael Marmot and colleagues in the late 1980s that revealed that first-generation South Asians living in the UK have a higher rate of coronary heart disease and diabetes compared to White Europeans. Since then we have funded research to understand why South Asians and people from other ethnic minority groups are affected differently by heart and circulatory diseases.
The BHF has supported two major ongoing research studies – called LOLIPOP and SABRE – which aim to reveal how ethnic background can affect the risk of common diseases and conditions, including heart disease and diabetes.
The LOLIPOP study has been following 30,000 volunteers living in West London for nearly 20 years to identify the environmental and genetic factors that contribute to heart disease, stroke and other diseases, and to develop new tools to spot people at increased risk. Among other things, the findings could help uncover why people of Indian ancestry have a higher risk of developing heart diseases.
The SABRE study started over 30 years ago, to study the health of a group of nearly 5,000 people of European, South Asian, African and African Caribbean background in the London boroughs of Brent and Southall. Participants, now in their 70s, 80s and 90s, were recently followed up by the research team led by Professor Nish Chaturvedi at University College London. They found that the risk of developing type 2 diabetes before the age of 80 was roughly double for people with a South Asian and African Caribbean background, compared with White Europeans.
Why the pandemic has made this more important than ever
Existing health inequalities have been further exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. People from ethnic minorities in the UK have been hit disproportionally hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Given the links between ethnicity and heart and circulatory diseases, it is even more important that we fight to understand why.
It is vital that people of all backgrounds have opportunities to take part in research and have access to the best available treatments and care.
Recognising avoidable and unfair health inequalities linked to ethnic background is the first step to addressing the issues in society that lead to them – so it’s important that our research in this area continues.
First published 1st June 2021