In the UK, more than half of us will develop a cardiovascular condition in our lifetime. Cardiovascular disease is an umbrella term for conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels.
Cardiovascular disease can be inherited, or you can be born with it. Each week in the UK, at least 12 people aged under 35 die from an undiagnosed heart condition. Heart disease is also the leading cause of serious illness and death in pregnant women in the UK.
But cardiovascular disease is most linked to age. Conditions such as coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, stroke and vascular dementia are most common in people over 50. Your risk of getting these conditions increases as you get older.
The number of people dying from cardiovascular disease in the UK has reduced by three quarters since the 1960s – partly due to new treatments and technologies developed through research. For example, many heart conditions can now be treated using a catheter rather than through surgery. A catheter is a thin, flexible tube inserted into a patient’s blood vessel and guided to their heart. Patients treated in this way recover more quickly and are at lower risk of infection.
Despite all the advances, there is still plenty of research to do. That includes improving diagnosis, to developing new technologies to manage the condition and better treatments to keep people living better, for longer.
Here are 5 studies helping us to have healthy hearts:
1. Software to prevent early heart disease in high-risk patients
1 in 250 people in the UK have an inherited condition that causes dangerously high levels of cholesterol from birth. If this goes untreated, it can cause serious heart damage. But only about 10% of those with the condition, called familial hypercholesterolaemia, have been diagnosed. Software developed with NIHR-funding can scan GP records to identify people likely to have the condition and then call them in for genetic testing. The software was tested on the records of nearly 2 million patients and shown to work well. It’s now being used in many GP practices across the UK.
2. Ensuring proper treatment for an irregular heartbeat
An irregular heartbeat or flutter – also known as atrial fibrillation (AF) – can increase your chances of a stroke. Although AF can be treated, many people don’t realise they have it. When people call an ambulance, paramedics usually check their heartbeat and often pick up AF. But this information isn’t routinely passed on to a patient’s GP, who can then ensure they are treated. The North East Ambulance Service is testing a way to do this automatically as part of the record that’s kept on each call out. If it works, it can be rolled out to ambulance services across the UK.
3. A promising new drug for people with stubborn high blood pressure
Around 14 million people in the UK have high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Although the condition can be treated, in around half of people these treatments don’t work well, so their blood pressure remains high. A trial of a new drug called baxdrostat was able to lower the blood pressure in patients with uncontrolled blood pressure. Taken alongside other treatments, the drug helped 2 in 5 patients reach healthy blood pressure levels.
4. Targeting heart disease through immune cells
Inflammation can narrow blood vessels, causing angina (chest pains), heart attacks and strokes. If inflammation persists after a heart attack, it can prevent the heart from healing. Certain immune cells, called B-cells, have been shown to make heart disease worse in animals. This means it might be possible to develop medicines that target these cells in humans, to help treat heart disease. Before they can do this, researchers need to know more about how these cells work in our bodies. Most of these B-cells are found in our tissue, rather than our blood. A team of scientists are planning to collect tissue from patients who undergo heart surgery and use these samples to study B-cells. They will compare cells from patients both with and without narrowing in their blood vessels. The aim is to get a deeper understanding of the role that B-cells play in heart disease.
5. An eye test to help predict cardiovascular issues in pregnancy
Pregnancy causes changes to the structure of blood vessels throughout the body. These changes can lead to complications such as pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure and stillbirth. One study is looking at whether changes in the blood vessels at the back of the eye can tell us what is happening to blood vessels in the rest of the body. The researchers hope it will help provide a new way to spot problems early during pregnancy.
Take part in cardiovascular research:
- The Preg-Heart study is recruiting both pregnant women with CVD and those without from across the UK to understand more about how heart disease affects women during and after pregnancy (study closes January 2028)
- Can drugs to reduce cholesterol in the blood help trigger the body’s natural mechanism to break down blood clots? (study closes October 2027)
- Can a new treatment called enlicitide work better in combination with existing treatments to reduce cholesterol? (study closes December 2026)
- Can a new anti-obesity drug reduce heart failure and deaths in obese patients with CVD? (study closes June 2028)
- Understanding how overactivation of immune cells plays a role in angina, heart attacks and strokes, by analysing tissue taken during heart surgery (study closes June 2026
Use our study search tool to find a study that interests you.
How you can get involved with research
Sign up to Be Part of Research to be contacted about a range of health and care research. Or check out our full list of studies to see if one is right for you.
And if taking part in a study doesn’t feel right at the moment, there are other ways to get involved in research.
