17th December 1997

Email this Page |

By the age of fifteen, one in four Northern Ireland children is heading for a heart attack.

That's just one of the alarming findings of a pioneering University of Ulster research programme studying coronary heart disease risk factors among the Province's young people.

According to Young Hearts research team leader Professor Colin Boreham, one in four Northern Ireland children aged 12-15 already have two or more risk factors that can lead to Coroonary Heart Disease, with one in ten having three or more.

Northern Ireland has one of the highest rates of coronary heart disease in the world. Discovering the factors that lead to its development in adult life is clearly of the highest importance for healthcare policy both in the Province and further afield.

The Young Hearts project is a unique study of 1000 Ulster children. Randomly selected from schools across the Province, the children were given extensive physical tests at age 12 in the first part of the research; the second part looked at them again three year later when they were 15. Today, they are in their early 20s, and the third phase of the project is underway thanks to a £207,000 grant from the British Heart Foundation,

Said Professor Boreham

"Coronary Heart Disease has its origins in childhood, particularly the behavioural aspects of childhood. It's during adolescence that people who become smokers actually take up the habit; it's during adolescence that physical activity patterns are established - those who are going to continue to be active generally set the pattern during adolescence, and those who aren't going to be active drop out in their early teens.

"Dietary patterns are largely established during chilhoood,. if we develop a taste for sweet, fatty, high salt foods in childhood, it becomes harder later on in life to change these patterns. Plus a whole lot of other socio economic factor - kind of housing, access to a car, educational opportunities - all are important during adolescence in determining the sort of stress that children are under and the opportunities they're going to have throughout life.

"All these factors influence the likelihood of developing CHD in later life. So even though someone's heart attack or angina may not happen for 30 - 40 years, its origins are already in place by the age of 13 or 14."

Running in tandem with the Young Hearts study is another project -- funded by the Wellcome Trust - into bone mass and osteoporosis.

"Using the same representative sample," said Professor Boreham, "We're tagging on abone health study, the lower back and the hip. These are the two critical areas of the body which suffer from osteoporosis in later life.

"We're asking the young people in the Young Hearts study to undergo a bone scan of can be traced in childhood and early adulthood. Certain factors, such as the amount of calcium that you ingest,(milk, dairy produce), how much exercise you take, and the kind of exercise you take and also your genetic disposition. These three factors largely determine the quality of your bones throughout life..

This study which was conducted in conjunction with the NI Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, will have important implications for women's health, as post menopausal women are particularly susceptible to osteoporosis as their oestrogen levels fall.

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk