Multiple factors for rising heart attacks in young people

NEW DELHI: An increasing number of heart attacks among the younger population in India has raised concern among medical practitioners in India and many of such cases have been attributed to sedentary lifestyle, stress and pre-disposed or genetic conditions in today’s youth.
Dr Manish Agarwal, senior consultant and head of interventional cardiology, PSRI Hospital, Delhi, speaking to The Sunday Guardian said that the increased rate of cardiac arrest amongst younger population in India is multi factorial, which includes undiagnosed coronary artery diseases, undiagnosed diabetes, high blood pressure, with no medications being provided.
“The younger generation today are unaware of health risks and the perception among youngsters that they are in their best of health which often leads to their problems remaining undiagnosed as they believe that they are in their peak of health and they do not need any medications and diagnosis. Very adverse lifestyles amongst the younger generation such as sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise, smoking, lack of adequate sleep, work stress, traffic jams, air pollution, etc are also amongst some of the reasons we are seeing more and more young patients landing up in hospitals with cardiac arrest,” Dr Agarwal told this newspaper.
A recent study found that one in five heart attacks in India are below the age of 30, unlike the earlier times, when heart attacks were prevalent amongst the older population. A 2019 study has also found that one in five of heart attacks recorded have had a history of diabetes.
A series of “silent heart attacks” are also being shared on social media sites, mostly amongst youngsters in India. Several videos are doing rounds on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook which shows that young and “healthy” individuals collapsing due to heart attacks and succumbing to the attack, raising concerns amongst people on what impact Covid-19 might have had on the human body.
The recent deaths of famous Bollywood singer K.K. and actor Siddharth Shukla, also raised concerns among health experts. However, doctors deny that Covid-19 or the Covid-19 vaccine has any role to play in the increasing heart attacks amongst the younger population in the country.
Dr Agarwal told The Sunday Guardian that though an increasing number of heart attacks have been found during the Covid-19 period, there is no scientific evidence to interlink the two. “Covid-19 as a disease does lead to a prothrombotic state, but there is no scientific study available to us at all that has directly linked Covid-19 to increasing heart attacks amongst youngsters. And definitely vaccination does not have any link to the increasing heart attacks and there is no evidence of vaccine induced heart attacks.”
“In fact the increasing number of heart attacks among the younger population may be occurring in those subsets of younger patients who have a strong family history of coronary artery disease and by this mean, those patients, whose parents or brothers who have history of heart ailments or have suffered a heart attack,” Dr Agarwal said.