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March 5, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Heart attacks are killing more young people\u2014and more women<\/p>\n A new study finds that heart attack deaths in U.S. hospitals are rising in people aged 54 and below, signaling a shift in cardiovascular issues in younger ages<\/p>\n By Lauren J. Young edited by Tanya Lewis<\/span><\/p>\n Paul Campbell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Heart problems are something most people typically associate with aging, but the risk of developing them might be skewing younger than before. A new study reveals more young people in the U.S. who are hospitalized for heart attacks are dying.<\/p>\n The study reports a steady increase in deaths in recent years among U.S. adults aged 54 and younger who had been hospitalized with their first severe heart attack. Rising trends were seen in both men and women, but young women experienced severe heart attacks at higher rates. The findings add to evidence that the demographics that are most prone to heart attacks are starting to shift\u2014stirring a reconsideration that the condition affects only older adults. The findings were published last week in the Journal of the American Heart Association.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not just an old person\u2019s problem,\u201d says Mohan Satish, the study\u2019s lead author and a cardiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. Heart attacks are still more prevalent in older people in the U.S., but the trend in younger individuals poses \u201can unsettling question,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Karen Joynt Maddox, a cardiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the new research, says the new findings show we are no longer making the same gains in reducing cardiovascular mortality. \u201cI think a lot of younger people feel pretty invincible,\u201d she says, \u201cbut cardiovascular risk factors don\u2019t particularly care how old you are.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers analyzed nearly one million hospitalizations from two types of heart attacks\u2014a severe form called ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and a less sudden but serious type called non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI)\u2014between 2011 and 2022 in people who were 18 to 54 years old. STEMI occurs when a blood clot fully blocks an artery that supplies blood to the heart, whereas NSTEMI happens when a clot partially blocks blood flow. In-hospital deaths after a first STEMI in this age group increased 1.2 percent over the study period. Overall, among people who experienced a first STEMI, women had a slightly higher mortality rate (3.1 percent) compared with that of men (2.6 percent).<\/p>\n To dig into what might be driving these increases, the team examined more than a dozen risk factors, including traditionally recognized ones such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, as well as \u201cnontraditional\u201d ones. The latter encompassed factors such as psychiatric disorders, nontobacco drug use and low income. Three nontraditional risk factors particularly stood out in young people: chronic kidney disease, nontobacco drug use and lower income.<\/p>\n High blood pressure and high cholesterol are still key risk factors in both young and older adults, \u201cbut clearly in young adults, we can see that these nontraditional risk factors have an impact,\u201d Satish says.<\/p>\n And nontraditional risk factors might make it harder to treat and prevent traditional ones, worsening health overall, he adds. For instance, if a young person is diagnosed with high blood pressure but also comes from a low socioeconomic background or has an overlapping autoimmune or psychiatric illness, \u201cthat might very well complicate how [a clinician would] address that high blood pressure,\u201d Satish explains. \u201cThat\u2019s critical\u2014that interplay between nontraditional and traditional risk is ever more important in these younger folks as compared to older adults.\u201d<\/p>\n Women also had a higher proportion of nontraditional risk factors compared with men, which could partially explain the sex differences in death rates. Additionally, as reported in past research, women were less likely to receive in-hospital heart attack procedures, such as operations to fix blockages.<\/p>\n The study only focused on hospital admissions and reports, which limited the scientists\u2019 understanding of recovery outcomes or disease burden after people were released, says Marat Fudim, a cardiologist at Duke Health in North Carolina, who was not involved in the research. \u201cThey cannot look at postdischarge death,\u201d he says, \u201conly hospitalized events.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Fudim says, the paper lines up with past research\u2014including his own, which has found that heart failure mortality rates are increasing in people under age 45. He adds that the new paper is a \u201ccall to action\u201d for the cardiovascular field. Fudim points to the need to focus more on early education about traditional and nontraditional risk factors, as well as to screen people for cardiovascular conditions at younger ages.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should all be very concerned when younger individuals are now in a crossfire of cardiovascular disease and bad outcomes to a greater degree than they ever were before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March 5, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Heart attacks are killing more young people\u2014and more women A new study finds that heart attack deaths in U.S. hospitals are rising in people aged 54 and below, signaling a shift in cardiovascular issues in younger ages By Lauren J. Young edited by Tanya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1839,3411,363,23567,418,801],"class_list":{"0":"post-45941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-attacks","9":"tag-heart","10":"tag-killing","11":"tag-peopleand","12":"tag-women","13":"tag-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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