The majority of adults 20 and older meet criteria for cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome, putting them at risk of developing full-blown heart disease, according to new research.
Last year, the American Heart Association recognized cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic, or CKM syndrome, as a "health disorder due to connections among heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes and obesity leading to poor health outcomes." The syndrome is categorized into four stages, the first being excess fat buildup in the body and the fourth heart disease, with or without kidney disease.
In the study, published May 8 in JAMA Network, researchers set out to determine how prevalent the condition is. They evaluated data from a national survey from 2011 to 2020 to determine individuals' CKM syndrome stage. Nearly 11,000 adults 20 and older were included.
Overall, nearly 90% of adults met criteria for some stage of CKM syndrome, including 15% for advanced stages.
"We absolutely were surprised that almost 90% of people met the criteria," Rahul Aggarwal, MD, study co-author and fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both based in Boston, told NBC News. "It was much higher than we anticipated in a database that included younger adults."
Nearly half of adults were in stage 2, meaning they had a moderate risk for heart disease because they either had high blood pressure, high triglycerides, kidney disease or type 2 diabetes.
The findings point to the need for more recognition of the connection between cardiac, metabolic and kidney health, and the need for earlier diagnosis of condition that increase the risk for heart disease, experts told NBC News in response to the study
"The main message from this study should be that many common behaviors are leading to an accumulation of diseases over one's lifetime, which will impact quality of life and survival," Robert Rosenson, MD, director of lipids and metabolism at New York City-based Mount SInai Health System, told the news outlet.