Alan Daugherty: cardiovascular research takes courage to roll with the punches

Urban dwellers are prone to a series of unhealthy lifestyles and conditions—unbalanced diet, lack of exercise, stress, smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, diabetes and obesity, which in fact are all risk factors accelerating the abnormal condition of the blood vessels, and are likely the causes of a variety of vascular diseases—stroke, abdominal aortic aneurysm, atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, peripheral artery disease, carotid artery disease and so on. Stroke is a leading cause of disability in the United States (1). Just abdominal aortic aneurysm alone causes over 175,000 deaths worldwide (2). Coronary heart disease is estimated to claim over 7 million lives every year (3). Vascular diseases-induced deaths could happen in every second, in every breath, and pose potential risk and danger to anyone of us.