Angela Rivellese is Professor of Internal Medicine, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Federico II University, Naples, Italy. She was president of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group up to 2007 and is currently the Chairman of the Council for the University degree of Dietitian at the Federico II University, Napoli. Her research focuses on nutrition and lipid metabolism; nutrition and diabetes; and abnormalities of lipid metabolism in diabetes.
Lifestyle factors and cardiovascular disease: A large body of evidence links lifestyle factors such as diet, alcohol intake, physical activity, smoking, and obesity with cardiovascular disease. These lifestyle factors not only influence established cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, dyslipidaemia and diabetes, but also novel pathways of risk including inflammation/oxidative stress, endothelial function, thrombosis/coagulation, and arrhythmia. At the population level, modest changes in lifestyle risk factors can translate to substantial effects on cardiovascular risk.