Dear Editor

I read with great interest the editorial written by Zaman et al. The paper has also highlighted that it is very difficult in any ethnic group to understand all unmeasured socioeconomic variables which affect overall cardiovascular risk.

Some unmeasured variable potentially could be:

1) Level of education of parents in the family. 2) Profession of father and mother. 3) Financial status of the family. 4) Diet - Personal liking of fast food in the family. Very difficult to measure, however previous research has shown that fast food is often preferred in lower socio-economical class [1]. Also, generally speaking Asian food can vary in its saturated fat content depending upon personal preferences. This will directly affect cardiovascular risk in that population. 5) Location - For example, do Asians in London have better lifestyles than those living in Glasgow? And does this effect overall cardiovascular risk?

In my opinion, Asian community educational programmes geared to healthy lifestyles would be imperative to overall reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in this group in the UK.

This could potentially include interactive sessions on -

1) Healthy Asian Cooking 2) Dancing (Bollywood/Hollywood) 3) Organised social group Country Walks 4) Talks on various diseases like Diabetes, Obesity, heart attack, risk factors for it. 5) Lastly, they should also know the fact - They are at higher risk of heart attack than any other ethnicity in the UK!

Hopefully, with education we can reduce the overall burden of CAD in Asian population in the UK.

Reference:

1. Smoyer-Tomic K.E., Spence J.C., Raine K.D., Amrhein C., et al. The association between neighborhood socioeconomic status and exposure to supermarkets and fast food outlets (2008) Health and Place, 14 (4), pp. 740-754.

Conflict of Interest:

None declared