By Mia De Graaf Health Editor For Dailymail.com
Published: 13:00 GMT, 7 March 2019 | Updated: 16:13 GMT, 7 March 2019
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Heart attack rates are rising in Americans under the age of 40, alarming new data reveal.
Experts attribute the shift to traditional factors - such as high cholesterol and diabetes - but also to abuse of substances like marijuana and cocaine, which is increasingly common among younger heart attack sufferers.
The overall rate of cardiovascular events has dropped thanks to fewer people of all ages smoking cigarettes and more older people taking statins.
However, research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's annual conference next week shows this progress has overshadowed an ominous shift.
Between 2000 and 2016, the rate of under-40s having heart attacks rose 2 percent a year.
What's more, to the researchers' surprise, younger sufferers were no more likely to survive the attack than older sufferers.
The overall rate of cardiovascular events has dropped thanks to fewer people smoking cigarettes and more older people taking statins. But data show the rate is rising in younger Americans
'It used to be incredibly rare to see anyone under age 40 come in with a heart attack--and some of these people are now in their 20s and early 30s,' said senior author Ron Blankstein, MD, a preventive cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
'Based on what we are seeing, it seems that we are moving in the wrong direction.
'It's really important for us to understand why people are actually having heart attacks at a
