Asian-Indians: a review of coronary artery disease in this understudied cohort in the United States by Ardeshna DR, Bob-Manuel T, Nanda A, Sharma A, Skelton WP 4th, Skelton M, Khouzam RN, Ann Transl Med. 2018 Jan;6(1):12.

The sections below contain excerpts from the research paper; I have made some words and phrases bold for emphasis.

All quotes are from this research paper (mentioned at the beginning of this article).

1. "The prevalence of CAD risks in Indians living in India is 11% for non-diabetic patients and 21.4% for diabetic patients."
2. "CAD prevalence in rural population is half that in urban population."
3. "Urban Indians have a body mass index (BMI) of 24-25, compared to rural Indians whose BMI is about 20."
4. "More than 50% of CAD associated death in India occurs before the patient reaches the age of 50 years."
5. "25% of myocardial infarction (MI) occur before the age of 40 years." [MI = 'heart attack']

Eye popping stats below (highlighted for emphasis). All quotes are from this research paper (mentioned at the beginning of this article).

1. "CAD rates are 3 times higher in Asian Indians living in US than the US national average."
2. "Within the US (California), hospitalization of Asian Indians for CAD is 4 times higher compared to White, Japanese and Filipinos and 6 times higher compared to Chinese."
3. "In general, Asian Indians get hospitalized for CAD complications 2-4 times higher than other ethnic groups and 5-10 times higher for population under 40 years of age."
4. "A study showed that ischemic heart disease, a manifestation of CAD, has a relative risk of 1.0 for Chinese population, 1.8 for Japanese population and 6.6 for South Asian population (all living in US) compared to the US national average."
5. "Thus, not only is CAD more common in Asian Indians, it is also more malignant."
6. "Asian Indians in general are less likely to exercise compared to white population. This sedentary lifestyle promotes obesity."
7. "Type 2 diabetes prevalence in Asian Indians in US has been reported to be at 18.3% for ages above 20 years. This is higher than the average of Indians living in India which is between 12.1-14.0%." — "It is almost 3 times higher than the US average of 5.3% and 4 times higher than the white population average of 4.8% for similar age groups"

Stats about South Asians from this article at Stanford Health Care:

The slide below was presented in South Asians and Heart Disease (YouTube), a talk given by the founders of South Asian Heart Center in Mountain View, California in 2011.

As per the slide above, heart disease stats among South Asians in USA are much worse than heart disease stats among Europids. But instead of focusing on such comparisons, let's focus on 2 points highlighted in red:

Vegetarian + Non-smoking + Non-obese = Healthy? No! Many South Asians mistakenly believe that if we follow vegetarianism, and if we don't smoke and if we are not too fat, then we are in great health. This is a misguided notion because non-smoking, non-obese vegetarians also get heart disease!

Global burden of disease: This is a technical term defined by WHO to measure the number of years lost due to premature mortality and years of life lost due to sub-optimal health. About 60% of "Global Burden of Heart Disease" is incurred by Indians even though they are only 17% of overall world population. For more information, see Global Burden of Disease — IHME GBD Visualization for India — Burden of Disease — Our World in Data.

All quotes are from this research paper (mentioned at the beginning of this article).

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