Taking heart disease to new heights

Researchers in Finland have based their findings on a systematic review and meta-analysis of 52 studies, involving 3,012,747 patients.

They found that short adults – those below 160.5 cms – were 1.5 times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease and even die from it than were tall people – those over 173.9 cms. And, this appeared to be true for both men and women. Looking at men and women separately, short men were 37 per cent more likely to die from any cause compared with tall men, and short women 55 per cent more likely.

“Since people have no control over their height, they can control their weight, lifestyle habits such as smoking, drinking and exercise and all of these together affect their heart disease risk,” said Dr Tuula Paajanen of Tampere University.

However, it is not known why short height should be associated with increased risk of heart disease. “We hypothesise that shorter people have smaller coronary arteries and smaller coronary arteries may be occluded earlier in life due to factors that increase risk, such as poor nutrition and infection that result in poor early life growth.”