Epidemiological clinical studies on vascular health are an important field of activity for VASCage. In her research, early-career scientist Sophia Kiechl has successfully focussed on adolescents and has contributed to several publications. The recent paper „Diagnostic Yield of a Systematic Vascular Health Screening Approach in Adolescents at Schools“ in the Journal of Adolescent Health has attracted particular attention. Kiechl is the first author in a team of the Department of Neurology at the Medical Univ. of Innsbruck.
The study highlights the fact that adolescents have relatively high rates of cardiovascular disease risk factors and underscores the urgency of the problem and the necessity of early prevention. The utility of cardiovascular health screenings in adolescence is an active topic of debate. The implications of the study for guidelines and recommendations and for further research are discussed in an accompanying editorial.
The Early Vascular Ageing (EVA) study among more than 2,000 adolescents (14-19 years) detected a high frequency of unknown vascular and metabolic risk factors of 45% in boys and 37% in girls. The most prevalent were hypertension and elevated blood lipid levels, two of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease. In the ongoing VASCage clinical trial EVA4YOU the health screenings and efforts to improve early prevention are continued and the investigations are deepened.
Links to the paper: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1eG5Q,Nz~NKD~k
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.10.019
Link to the editorial: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X21005498