Global Courant
KUALA LUMPUR – Cardiovascular diseases are on the rise in Malaysia.
A paper published in June by a panel of medical experts revealed that Malaysians develop heart disease eight years younger than the global average.
The average age of a Malaysian who has a heart attack is 58, compared to 63 in Thailand and 68 in Singapore.
One of the main causes is that high cholesterol goes undiagnosed in many Malaysians.
Despite high cholesterol being the second most common risk factor for heart disease, it had the lowest diagnosis rate of 35 percent of risk factors, according to the study.
About a quarter, or 24.6 percent, of Malaysians were unaware they had high cholesterol.
“The relative age of patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Malaysia is lower compared to other countries,” said the paper titled “Heart Matters: The Rising Burden of Cardiovascular Disease in Malaysia and Potential Touchpoints for Interventions”.
“In 2019, the mean age of these patients was 56 to 59 years, which is about 10 years younger than those in advanced countries, and as of 2019, nearly one in four CVD patients were under 50 years old.”
Dr. Alan Fong, consultant cardiologist and author of the position paper, said high cholesterol is often overlooked.
“High cholesterol usually produces no noticeable symptoms, which is why people often see it as less dangerous,” he added.
A separate survey conducted in December 2022 on behalf of the Malaysian Medical Association and the pharmaceutical company Novartis found that 75 percent of Malaysians believe that high cholesterol is associated with symptoms, which is not true.
A blood test is the only way to detect it.
High cholesterol, especially LDL cholesterol, increases the chance of developing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), the most common type of heart disease.
Atherosclerosis is a condition in which LDL cholesterol and other substances build up in the walls of blood vessels and form atherosclerotic plaque. Over time, this can grow, especially when cholesterol levels are high, and cause severe narrowing of the arteries that can lead to heart attacks or strokes.
Co-author and advisor to family medicine Dr. Sri Wahyu Taher told The Straits Times that screening for the public at outreach events in places such as shopping malls involves a simple fingerstick test for total cholesterol levels. But this does not reveal LDL cholesterol levels whose tracking requires a person’s blood to be drawn from the arm in a healthcare facility.
While she cautioned that the data collected may not be representative of all countries’ populations, she noted that Malaysia has the highest prevalence of obesity among Southeast Asian countries, which could be one of the factors leading Malaysians to have heart attacks at a younger age.
