REACT: 1 in 13 Adults Under 30 Already Have Artery Plaque — SkimNews
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- REACT study found atherosclerotic plaques in 57.1% of 16,808 apparently healthy adults ages 18 to 70 in Denmark and Spain, none with a prior cardiovascular disease diagnosis, presenting at ESC Congress 2026 and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
- One in 13 participants ages 18 to 29 already had signs of atherosclerosis in at least one artery, with prevalence climbing to about 9 in 10 among those ages 60 to 70.
- Traditional risk scores like SCORE2 identified only a small proportion of people who already had silent atherosclerosis, indicating risk-factor-based prevention is missing much existing disease decades before symptoms.
- Men's atherosclerosis patterns ran roughly 5 to 10 years ahead of women's, with women showing their sharpest rise between ages 40 and 60, a window the researchers link to the menopausal transition.
- Most participants with coronary atherosclerosis also showed plaque in their carotid or femoral arteries, leading researchers to propose portable ultrasound of those vessels as a quicker, noninvasive alternative to CT-based coronary screening.
- The Novo Nordisk Foundation awarded up to EUR 23 million to fund REACT's first phase; if funded, Phase 2 (REACT-PROTECT) is planned for 2027–2032 to test whether imaging-guided prevention reduces heart attacks and strokes.
- REACT researchers are extending the project to India, Singapore, Tanzania, and Mexico to validate the findings across diverse populations.
Why it matters: Cardiovascular disease kills nearly 20 million people a year, and current prevention still relies on estimating risk from factors like cholesterol and blood pressure. REACT shows those scores miss most people who already have arterial plaque — meaning a screening paradigm built on direct imaging, potentially via portable ultrasound, could redirect prevention toward the disease itself, not a probability guess.
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