Cumulative BP can be a reliable measure of cardiovascular disease risk, study suggests A global leading cause of death today is a class of dreaded disorders called cardiovascular diseases (CVD), which are ailments of the heart and blood vessels, such as arrhythmia, stroke, coronary artery diseases, cardiac arrest, and so on. The causes for each CVD are different and can be genetic or lifestyle related; but one key risk factor is hypertension, also known as high blood pressure (BP). For instance, as a recent paper published in Chinese Medical Journal notes, in 2017, hypertension was a factor in over 2.5 million deaths in China alone, 95.7% of which were due to CVD.