Even if their cholesterol levels are low, teen-agers and young adults who smoke have three times the level of plaques in a major artery as those who don't smoke, according to a new study that further confirms the early onset of signs of heart disease. The study, being published in the March 20 issue of Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association, also found that young obese males have twice the level of plaques in the right coronary artery as males of normal weight.
Plaques are thickened areas of the arterial walls that eventually can block the vessel.
Doctors have known based on previous research that the signs of coronary-artery disease begin in childhood and young adulthood, but this study emphasizes that young adults who have normal cholesterol levels are not free of risk. If they are obese, have high blood pressure or smoke, they still may be building the fatty streaks and hard plaques that turn into artery disease. The findings were particularly notable for smokers, who constituted 44 percent of the group studied. Nearly half of those with normal cholesterol had at least one other risk factor, in most cases smoking. Atherosclerosis, the disease in which deposits form inside arteries, develops in two stages.