Mumbai: Morbid as it may sound, rising heart ailments have expanded the market for cardiovascular drugs in the country.Drugs across the cardiac category, including medications for heart failure therapies and cholesterol control, are flying off the shelves, with sales rising nearly 50% in five years to ₹30,483 crore in the 12 months through April 2025, according to data sourced by market tracker PharmaTrac for ET. Consumption of lipid-lowering and heart failure therapies almost doubled in the last five years, it showed.In the past year, growing demand for cardiac products has led to an 11% rise in sales across categories like lipid-lowering drugs, antianginals, platelet aggregation inhibitors, heart failure therapies, heparins and antithrombotic agents over the year before.Drugs in heart failure therapy-such as sacubitril and eplerenone-recorded an 83% increase in sales in the last five years and a 19% rise in the last 12 months to ₹1,304 crore, showed PharmaTrac data.Doctors attribute the increase in heart diseases to an unhealthy lifestyle, lack of sleep, rising diabetes and obesity, high levels of stress, long work hours, etc.Coronary artery disease”Over the last decade, and especially in the last 4-5 years, there is a significant shift of coronary artery disease towards the younger population between the age of 25 and 40 at an unheard of level,” said Ganesh Kumar AV, director of cardiology at LH Hiranandani Hospital, Powai, Mumbai.Data also show a change in patient profile, with more people in their 30s and 40s reporting heart ailments – one in five heart attack patients in the country are younger than 40 years of age.”Every large and small hospital in India receives this population of patients. One of the fundamental reasons for this is the lifestyle among the younger cohort-lack of sports activity in schools and colleges, increase in fast food consumption, lack of sleep with many youngsters being hooked onto gadgets-all of which is leading to a rise in childhood obesity which is also connected to heart diseases,” according to Kumar.That apart, he said rising work pressure, stress level and no time to exercise among the young working population is resulting in heart ailments manifesting at 30-35 years versus 50-55 years earlier.”Almost 18 million deaths are reported worldwide due to cardiovascular issues and one-fifth of those have been in India,” said Amitabh Dube, country president and managing director, Novartis India.Of all the deaths in the country, 25% are related to cardiovascular issues, he added. “It’s a huge unmet need and in India, the worry is that we see younger patient profiles increasing. The demographic direction is towards the younger population. Patients in their 30s and 40s are getting the problem.”Dube noted, “We started looking at the key factors and saw the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), or ‘bad cholesterol’, getting bigger as a causative factor, where 50% of CV disease, plaque formation and elevated cholesterol are because of LDL-Cs.”Additional risks for youthThe three major risk factors for heart ailment are diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. But Nihar Mehta, associate director, department of structural heart diseases at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, said that the last 4-5 years have seen new and additional risks contributing to a rise in cardiovascular disease among the younger population, including lifestyle, pollution and lack of sleep.
Mumbai: Morbid as it may sound, rising heart ailments have expanded the market for cardiovascular drugs in the country.Drugs across the cardiac category, including medications for heart failure therapies and cholesterol control, are flying off the shelves, with sales rising nearly 50% in five years to ₹30,483 crore in the 12 months through April 2025, according to data sourced by market tracker PharmaTrac for ET. Consumption of lipid-lowering and heart failure therapies almost doubled in the last five years, it showed.In the past year, growing demand for cardiac products has led to an 11% rise in sales across categories like lipid-lowering drugs, antianginals, platelet aggregation inhibitors, heart failure therapies, heparins and antithrombotic agents over the year before.Drugs in heart failure therapy-such as sacubitril and eplerenone-recorded an 83% increase in sales in the last five years and a 19% rise in the last 12 months to ₹1,304 crore, showed PharmaTrac data.Doctors attribute the increase in heart diseases to an unhealthy lifestyle, lack of sleep, rising diabetes and obesity, high levels of stress, long work hours, etc.Coronary artery disease”Over the last decade, and especially in the last 4-5 years, there is a significant shift of coronary artery disease towards the younger population between the age of 25 and 40 at an unheard of level,” said Ganesh Kumar AV, director of cardiology at LH Hiranandani Hospital, Powai, Mumbai.Data also show a change in patient profile, with more people in their 30s and 40s reporting heart ailments – one in five heart attack patients in the country are younger than 40 years of age.”Every large and small hospital in India receives this population of patients. One of the fundamental reasons for this is the lifestyle among the younger cohort-lack of sports activity in schools and colleges, increase in fast food consumption, lack of sleep with many youngsters being hooked onto gadgets-all of which is leading to a rise in childhood obesity which is also connected to heart diseases,” according to Kumar.That apart, he said rising work pressure, stress level and no time to exercise among the young working population is resulting in heart ailments manifesting at 30-35 years versus 50-55 years earlier.”Almost 18 million deaths are reported worldwide due to cardiovascular issues and one-fifth of those have been in India,” said Amitabh Dube, country president and managing director, Novartis India.Of all the deaths in the country, 25% are related to cardiovascular issues, he added. “It’s a huge unmet need and in India, the worry is that we see younger patient profiles increasing. The demographic direction is towards the younger population. Patients in their 30s and 40s are getting the problem.”Dube noted, “We started looking at the key factors and saw the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), or ‘bad cholesterol’, getting bigger as a causative factor, where 50% of CV disease, plaque formation and elevated cholesterol are because of LDL-Cs.”Additional risks for youthThe three major risk factors for heart ailment are diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. But Nihar Mehta, associate director, department of structural heart diseases at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, said that the last 4-5 years have seen new and additional risks contributing to a rise in cardiovascular disease among the younger population, including lifestyle, pollution and lack of sleep. Economic Times
