Prevalence and trends of risk factors and comorbidities among patients treated for acute myocardial infarction: Insights from the Hungarian Myocardial Infarction Registry, 2014–2024

Abstract

Background: The Hungarian Myocardial Infarction Registry is a mandatory registry that records the medical history, hospital care data, and long-term follow-up of every patient diagnosed with myocardial infarction in Hungary. The aim was to examine the age distribution, common risk factors and comorbidities among patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) recorded in the Registry between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2024. Methods: Generalised additive models were used to estimate the prevalence of risk factors and comorbidities, allowing smooth time trends and age-adjustment. UpSet plots were used to investigate frequent combinations. Results: We analysed data from 135,865 patients (39.6% women) who received treatment for AMI (46.6% STEMI). The most prevalent comorbidity was hypertension. The prevalence of smoking, obesity and diabetes increased in both genders and both AMI types, with the odds ratios per 10 year ranging from 1.11 to 1.37 for diabetes (depending on gender and AMI type), from 1.43 to 2.08 for smoking and from 1.37 to 1.62 for obesity. In case of hyperlipidaemia, the increase was significant only among cases with STEMI. For hypertension, some changes were statistically significant, but were not clinically relevant. The prevalence of young (<40 years) patients changed significantly only among male patients with STEMI, where it decreased, while the prevalence of old (>80 years) patients decreased significantly in every group, except among male patients with NSTEMI. Conclusion: We observed a significant increase in the prevalence of smoking, obesity and diabetes mellitus in different types of myocardial infarction in both sexes.