Drugs, lifestyle cut heart deaths

Lifestyle changes, new drugs and advances in treatment were equally responsible for a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. and British researchers reported.

But increasing levels of diabetes and obesity are bucking that trend now, according to the team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Britain’s University of Liverpool and Newcastle University.

They calculated that nearly 342,000 early heart deaths were prevented between 1980 and 2000, although heart disease remains the No. 1 killer of Americans.

Surgery and other interventions prevented 47% of the early deaths, while 44% were prevented by a combination of lower smoking rates and risk factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure being cut by drugs, exercise or better diet.

“However, the prevalence of both obesity and diabetes has increased alarmingly,” the team wrote in the report, published in the June 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.