• Posted September 25, 2025

Heart Disease Remains Top Killer Worldwide

Heart disease remains the world’s top killer, causing 1 in every 3 deaths around the globe, a new study says.

Worldwide, the number of heart-related deaths has risen sharply, climbing to 19.2 million in 2023 from 13.1 million in 1990, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Heart disease, brain bleeds, strokes and high blood pressure were the most common threats to health, researchers found.

“This report is a wake-up call: heart disease remains the world’s leading cause of death, and the burden is rising fastest in places least equipped to bear it,” said journal editor Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.

"The good news is we know the risks and how to address them,” he added in a news release. "If countries act now with effective health policies and systems, millions of lives can be saved.”

For the study, researchers estimated the burden of 375 diseases, including heart disease, on the health of people in 204 countries between 1990 and 2023.

Results show that lifestyle-related risk factors account for about 80% of the disability-adjusted life years lost to heart disease, researchers said. Disability-adjusted life years is a measure combining years of life lost to early death with years lived with disability, to create a rounded picture of healthy years of life lost to disease.

The top risk factors included high body mass index (an estimate of body fat based on height and weight); high blood sugar levels; smoking; drinking; and poor diet, researchers said. Other top risk factors included environmental exposures like air pollution, lead exposure and higher temperatures, they said.

Metabolic problems like excess weight and high blood sugar contributed to 67% of heart-related disability-adjusted life years, the study found. Behaviors such as smoking, drinking and poor diet contributed to 45%, and environmental exposures to 36%.

“By targeting the most important and preventable risks, with effective policies and proven, cost-effective treatments, we can work to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases,” said senior researcher Dr. Gregory Roth, director of the Program in Cardiovascular Health Metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“Each country can find reliable evidence and a kind of policy prescription for better cardiovascular health in our results,” he added in a news release.

The study also found that heart disease affected an estimated 240 million people worldwide in 2023; peripheral artery disease, 122 million.

Men had higher death rates from heart disease than women in most regions, and risk rose steeply after age 50.

The study also showed a 16-fold difference between the countries with the lowest and the highest rates of disability-adjusted life years lost to heart disease.

“Our analysis shows wide geographic differences in cardiovascular disease burden that can’t be explained by income level alone,” Roth said. “Given this kind of variation, our findings offer the opportunity to tailor local health policies to target the most relevant risks for specific populations.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on preventing heart disease.

SOURCE: American College of Cardiology, news release, Sept. 24, 2025