The number of heart disease cases in China has been on the rise and a recent study has revealed its major causes.

Basing the result from the survey conducted among 26,000 people in the country's nine provinces from 1991 to 2011, the China Health and Nutrition Survey disclosed that the cardiovascular disease (CVD) has become an epidemic.

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According to Yanping Li, research scientist in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School and lead author of the study, there is a possibility that new cases of heart disease in China, particularly heart attacks and stroke, will be registered in the next 20 years if there is continued increase in in high blood pressure, an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, increasing obesity, and worsening dietary trends.

"We described trends from 1991 to 2011 in dietary and other lifestyle risk factors for CVD in China and projected how these trends might play out from 2011 to 2031," Li said, as reported by China Daily.

The study, which was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and was released on Monday, noted that in 2011, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood glucose were cited as the top reasons of the CVD cases among the Chinese.

It was further revealed that China's heart disease cases in the said year caused the death of three million, or 44% of the 6.8 million Chinese over age 35 who died then.

Senior author Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard Chan School, stated that "China is facing a rising epidemic of cardiovascular disease and it shows no sign of abating."

"It's imperative to continue to monitor the problem, which has serious social and economic consequences," he continued to say about China's heart disease problem.

Tagschina, China Heart Disease