Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cardiovascular disease is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. It includes coronary artery disease, heart attack, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, rheumatic heart disease, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmia, congenital heart disease, valvular heart disease, aortic aneurysms, peripheral artery disease, and venous thrombosis.
Cardiovascular disease resulted in 17.9 million deaths in 2015, which was 32.1 percent of all deaths that year, up from 12.3 million deaths or 25.8 percent in 1990. It is the leading cause of death worldwide in every region except Africa.
Up to 90 percent of cardiovascular disease may be preventable if established risk factors are avoided. Prevention includes healthy eating, exercise, avoiding tobacco smoke, limiting alcohol, and treating high blood pressure, blood lipids, and diabetes.
At the same age, men are about 50 percent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and are typically diagnosed seven to ten years earlier than women. Coronary heart disease is two to five times more common among middle-aged men than women, and one proposed explanation is the protective effect of estrogen in women before menopause.
Key risk factors for cardiovascular disease include age, sex, tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, high blood cholesterol, family history, air pollution, poor sleep, and psychological stress. High blood pressure accounts for about 13 percent of cardiovascular deaths, tobacco 9 percent, diabetes 6 percent, lack of exercise 6 percent, and obesity 5 percent.
Age is the most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, with risk roughly tripling each decade of life. An estimated 82 percent of people who die of coronary heart disease are 65 and older, and the risk of stroke doubles every decade after age 55.
Over 80 percent of global cardiovascular deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. An estimated 60 percent of the world's cardiovascular disease burden will occur in the South Asian subcontinent, despite it holding only 20 percent of the world's population.