Seema Hakhu Kachru in Houston/Sify
 
Houston, Jan 20: South Asians living abroad experience heart attacks at a younger age compared to other ethnic groups as they are exposed to greater risk factors such as smoking from an early stage, according to a study.

The research, part of a massive Canadian-led international study on cardiovascular disease, found that deaths from heart attack occur among people native to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka five to 10 years earlier than among those from other populations. 

"South Asian people who represent approximately 1.5 billion people in the world, which is in fact a quarter of humanity, seem to have a special predilection for getting heart disease," said principal investigator Salim Yusuf of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

"What this really means is we need to be very aggressive about promoting the right lifestyle in South Asians, and that should make a big impact," he said, noting that about 1.2 million people of South Asian descent live in Canada.

This has raised the possibility that South Asians exhibit a special susceptibility for acute myocardial infarction (AMI; heart attack) that is not explained by traditional risk factors.

Despite documenting the higher rates of earlier coronary heart disease (CHD) in South Asians, few studies have been able to shed light on its reasons.