Depersonalized medicine urged to reduce CVD burden globally

Annual Meeting of the CDA/CSEM

TORONTO — Moving from “personalized” to “depersonalized” medicine in cardiovascular disease care has the potential to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease, according to data presented here.

“We need more ‘depersonalized’ medicine [to prevent the majority of premature cases of CVD],” said Salim Yusuf, MD, DPhil, MRCP, the Heart and Stroke Foundation Chair in Cardiology in Canada, and professor of medicine at McMaster University. “The movement to personalized medicine will harm public health. We need to be more rational, so that future approaches will have more of a population focus.”

Yusuf spoke about strategies to reduce the global burden of CVD by 50% in the next 25 years at the annual meeting of the Canadian Diabetes Association and Canadian Society for Endocrinology and Metabolism. He said social policies and planning that promote healthy lifestyles and behaviors would lead to bigger effects on the rate of diabetes and the global burden of CVD.

There is much invested in the field of genetic research, with the hope that such efforts will yield new therapies for various medical conditions, Yusuf said.

However, although genetics play a role in CVD, lifestyle and social environment have a larger influence on the development of CVD, Yusuf said, noting that a reduction in smoking will have a larger effect on decreasing the CVD burden globally vs. new pharmacotherapies.

“For the moment, for conditions like diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, the genetic component [in CVD] is likely to be tiny,” Yusuf said. “If someone’s BMI is reduced from 40 to 30, that will have a much bigger effect [in preventing CVD].”

For more information:

Yusuf S. #32. Presented at: Annual Meeting of the Canadian Diabetes Association/Canadian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism; Oct. 26-29, 2011; Toronto.

The core message is that we need to be thinking about how we live our lives that puts us at risk for cardiovascular disease. We need to think about how we can change our environment and how we can do things at a population level. It’s not to take away from clinical care, but the biggest bang for the buck will come from a population health strategy. Look at how people are eating, and lower the salt and fat content, for example.

– Stewart Harris, MD, MPH, FCFP, FACPM
Professor, Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatics and Family Medicine,
Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario;
Chair in Diabetes Management, Canadian Diabetes Association

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