Sharma Shubhankar, Martikainen Pekka, Myrskylä Mikko, Tarkiainen Lasse, Suulamo Ulla
Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Max Planck-University of Helsinki Centre for Social Inequalities in Population Health, Helsinki, Finland.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2025 Mar 12;80(4). doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaf007.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality globally. Examining trends in CVD burden and associated sociodemographic disparities can contribute to tailoring policies that promote cardiovascular health and narrow health disparities. However, existing studies predominantly focus only on mortality. Therefore, we provide a more comprehensive understanding of CVD trends by studying the diverse aspects of CVD burden: lifetime risk, onset age, CVD-free and CVD life expectancy, and survival with CVD. We focus on the overall Finnish population in 1996-2020, as well as gender and educational disparities.
We use sociodemographic information from individual-level population registers, which are linked to hospital discharge and Death Registers, on the entire Finnish population aged 40-100 years in five five-year periods in 1996-2020 (N = 2,796,732-3,273,232). We employed multistate models to derive the study metrics.
Overall, CVD's lifetime risk stabilizes at 72% following a rise, with onset age and CVD-free life expectancy increased by 3 years. Although men bear a higher CVD burden, they experience a greater increase in onset age and CVD-free expectancy than women. Educational disparities in CVD-free expectancy persist, exceeding 3.5 years for men and women. Furthermore, survival with CVD has extended by 2.8 years but educational disparities widen.
Despite the encouraging CVD trends in the overall population and progress in narrowing gender disparities, there remains considerable room for further improvement. Persistent educational disparities in CVD burden underscore the need for more effective interventions to address enduring inequalities.
心血管疾病（CVD）是全球主要的死亡原因。研究心血管疾病负担趋势及相关的社会人口统计学差异，有助于制定促进心血管健康和缩小健康差距的政策。然而，现有研究主要仅关注死亡率。因此，我们通过研究心血管疾病负担的多个方面：终生风险、发病年龄、无心血管疾病和患心血管疾病后的预期寿命，以及患心血管疾病后的生存情况，来更全面地了解心血管疾病趋势。我们关注1996 - 2020年的芬兰总体人口，以及性别和教育程度差异。
我们使用来自个人层面人口登记册的社会人口统计学信息，这些信息与医院出院记录和死亡登记册相关联，涉及1996 - 2020年五个五年期内40 - 100岁的全体芬兰人口（N = 2,796,732 - 3,273,232）。我们采用多状态模型来得出研究指标。
总体而言，心血管疾病的终生风险在上升后稳定在72%，发病年龄和无心血管疾病预期寿命增加了3岁。尽管男性承担着更高的心血管疾病负担，但他们的发病年龄和无心血管疾病预期寿命的增幅比女性更大。无心血管疾病预期寿命的教育程度差异依然存在，男性和女性均超过3.5岁。此外，患心血管疾病后的生存时间延长了2.8年，但教育程度差异却扩大了。
尽管总体人群中心血管疾病趋势令人鼓舞，且在缩小性别差距方面取得了进展，但仍有很大的进一步改善空间。心血管疾病负担方面持续存在的教育程度差异凸显了采取更有效干预措施以解决长期不平等问题的必要性。
