Cardiology

Researchers report clear shift in arterial diseases in diabetes

There has been a redistribution in the risk of arterial disease in type 1 and 2 diabetes. The risks of heart attack and stroke have decreased significantly, while complications in more peripheral vessels have increased in ...

Health

Trial shows eggs may not be bad for your heart after all

Whether you like your eggs sunny-side up, hard boiled or scrambled, many hesitate to eat them amid concerns that eggs may raise cholesterol levels and be bad for heart health. However, results from a prospective, controlled ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

For younger women, mental health now may predict heart health later

Younger women are generally thought to have a low risk of heart disease, but new research urges clinicians to revisit that assumption, especially for women who suffer from certain mental health conditions. A new study being ...

Cardiology

Deep-learning model based on chest X-ray helps predict MACE

A deep-learning model based on a chest radiograph (CXR) for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk (CXR CVD-Risk) predicts major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) beyond the clinical standard, according to a study published ...

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Risk factor

A risk factor is a variable associated with an increased risk of disease or infection. Risk factors are correlational and not necessarily causal, because correlation does not imply causation. For example, being young cannot be said to cause measles, but young people are more at risk as they are less likely to have developed immunity during a previous epidemic.

Risk factors are evaluated by comparing the risk of those exposed to the potential risk factor to those not exposed. Let's say that at a wedding, 74 people ate the chicken and 22 of them were ill, while of the 35 people who had the fish or vegetarian meal only 2 were ill. Did the chicken make the people ill?

So the chicken eaters' risk = 22/74 = 0.297 And non-chicken eaters' risk = 2/35 = 0.057.

Those who ate the chicken had a risk over five times as high as those who did not, suggesting that eating chicken was the cause of the illness. Note, however, that this is not proof. Statistical methods would be used in a less clear cut case to decide what level of risk the risk factor would have to present to be able to say the risk factor is linked to the disease (for example in a study of the link between smoking and lung cancer). Even then, no amount of statistical analysis could prove that the risk factor causes the disease; this could only be proven using direct methods such as a medical explanation of the disease's roots.

The earliest use of risk factor analysis dates back to Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine (1020s), though the term "risk factor" was first coined by heart researcher Dr. Thomas R. Dawber in a landmark scientific paper in 1961, where he attributed heart disease to specific conditions (blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking).

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