This new tool helps chart risks of heart attack, stroke for anyone in world aged over 40

Globorisk measures cardiovascular risk in individuals aged 40 or older by factoring in the person's smoking status, blood pressure, diabetes status, and total cholesterol level, whilst adjusting for the effects of sex and age on cardiovascular disease between countries.

The researchers recalibrated and applied their risk score to 11 countries from different world regions, using data from recent national health surveys to replace the average age-and-sex risk factor levels in each country and incorporating cardiovascular disease death rates for each age-and-sex group. They developed country-specific risk charts for predicting individuals' risk of cardiovascular disease, and country-specific assessments of the 10-year cardiovascular disease burden.

They estimated that the proportion of people at high risk (10percent or higher) of having a fatal heart attack or stroke within 10 years was higher in low- and middle-income countries (eg, China and Mexico) compared with high-income countries (eg, South Korea, Spain, and Denmark).

For example, in China around a third of men and women (nearly 170 million aged between 40 and 84 years) have a high 10-year risk of dying from a cardiovascular event compared with only 5-10 percent of men and women in Spain and Denmark.

The research is published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal.