Preventing cardiovascular disease risk from birth across the life course

Project status: Active

Research area: Infection, Immunity and Global Health > Inflammatory Origins

Uncovering how early-life infections and inflammation shape life-long heart health.

Our Inflammatory Origins research group is recognised as world leaders in inflammation, infection, and cardiovascular research.

The risk of cardiovascular disease in children

Cardiovascular disease affects one in five adults in Australia and causes a quarter of all deaths. Current prevention focuses on traditional risk factors (such as high cholesterol) in adults, which accounts for about half of overall risk.

Yet cardiovascular risk accumulates from early life onwards and emerging risk factors (including infection and inflammation) are poorly understood.

Primordial prevention - stopping risk factors from developing in childhood, when damage is still reversible - is key to reducing cardiovascular disease throughout life.

By uncovering how childhood infections and inflammation shape lifelong heart health, we can shift prevention into childhood - when it can make the greatest difference, ensuring healthier lives for generations to come.

How researchers are preventing cardiovascular disease risk

The Origins of Inflammation program explores how infections and inflammation beginning in childhood shape lifelong cardiovascular health, and how early intervention can prevent heart disease before irreversible damage occurs.

How do early life infections affect heart health?

Following children from infancy, this study examines how common infections drive inflammation and early cardiovascular risk, and identifies protective factors, such as breastfeeding, that reduce this risk.

What happens to heart health after serious infection?

This study investigates how severe infections, requiring hospitalisation, alter inflammation and heart health in children and adults, tracking recovery over time to identify who remains at risk and when cardiovascular prevention should begin and in whom.

For more information, visit our VASCFIND Study.

Can new drug treatments reduce inflammation-driven risk?

This project will examine whether new anti-obesity medications reduce inflammation, improve immune function, reduce inflammation, and lower future cardiovascular disease risk in young people.

For more informatoin, visit our WellMet Study.

Together, the program aims to shift heart disease prevention into childhood, improving health across generations.