Annual Report 2003 Aventis - Sanofi

What is the status of the treatment and control of cardiovascular
diseases today?
Our approach to understanding, preventing and treating cardiovascular disease, the
world’s leading cause of mortality with 8 - 10 million related deaths worldwide per
year, has greatly changed over the last 50 years. While cardiovascular disease has decreased
in the developed world, 80 % of cardiovascular disease today occurs in developing
countries. By 2020, 85 - 90 % of cardiovascular disease cases will occur in the
developing world.
Lifestyle changes in different parts of the world are a fundamental driver in the
prevalence of cardiovascular diseases. The industrialization of poorer countries has
led to a decrease in activity, and people are eating richer food and smoking more.
This has led to an increase in obesity, high blood pressure and high lipids. Meanwhile,
with many people in richer nations changing towards healthier lifestyles, the
risk of cardiovascular disease is decreasing.
What important new developments in the fi eld will we see looking ahead?
The next few decades will present some interesting challenges. Today there are a
wide number of effective treatments for cardiovascular disease from ACE inhibitors
and Beta blockers to simple aspirin. Going forward, we need to ask which combinations
of the available therapies work best, and, most importantly, how cost effective
they are. This will be the biggest challenge facing the pharmaceutical industry.
We will also need to concentrate our efforts on fi nding ways to reduce the care
gap to ensure that proven treatments are used widely and appropriately.
How far have we come in cardiovascular risk prevention?
As recently as the mid-1960s, there were no effective ways to treat cardiovascular disease.
But over the last 40 years we have made tremendous progress, from controlling
blood pressure to cholesterol lowering. Crucially, we are making headway towards preventing
the onset of cardiovascular disease
in younger segments of the population.
The main challenge we face today is
that most of our efforts to treat cardiovascu
lar disease are based on rearguard
ac tions; they do not treat the root causes
of the disease: obesity, high blood pressure
and high lipids. We need to focus
on preventing the spread of cardiovascular
disease through societal policies to
promote ac tivity and a healthy diet and
curb tobacco consumption and fatty
foods.
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