The Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium

Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: All-cause Mortality; Cardiovascular Disease

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05466825

GCVRC001

Details and patient eligibility

About

The Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium (GCVRC) brings together harmonized individual-level data from over 2.2 million individuals across 126 cohorts, 40 countries, and 6 continents, with recruitment ongoing. The GCVRC examines the impact of classical cardiovascular risk factors-such as body mass index, systolic blood pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, current smoking, and diabetes-on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality worldwide.

Full description

A small number of modifiable risk factors may account for a significant proportion of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. However, the CVD burden attributable to classical risk factors depends on the populations studied and the methodologies used.

The Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium (GCVRC) is an international collaboration that continuously includes cohort studies from around the world to improve cardiovascular risk prediction. The GCVRC uses extensively harmonized individual-level data from currently more than 2.2 Mio individuals from 126 cohorts, 40 countries and 6 continents categorized in 8 geographical regions (based on a modification of WHO and United Nations definitions) - North America, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, Asia, and Oceania.

The consortium has a special focus on classical, potentially modifiable cardiovascular risk factors: Body-mass index, systolic blood pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, current smoking, and diabetes. Key research questions include examining the impact of these factors on major outcomes by geographical region and sex, as well as estimating associated lifetime risk and the potential benefits of controlling these risk factors.

This work is critical for developing regionally tailored CVD prevention and treatment strategies, identifying residual risk, and improving global cardiovascular health. Based on GCVRC data, a landmark paper on the effect of classical risk factors on new-onset CVD and all-cause mortality was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2206916).

Enrollment: 2,500,000 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Population-based individual-level data with available information on the classical cardiovascular risk factors including body-mass index, systolic blood pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, current smoking, and diabetes, as well as the outcomes of interest.

Exclusion criteria

• Participants with age below 18 years
• No information on the outcome of interest
• No information on the exposure of interest (CVD risk factors)
• History of CVD at baseline