The whole world is getting fatter, except perhaps for the women of Italy and Singapore. Globally, blood pressure is slowly coming down. Cholesterol is falling in rich countries and rising in developing ones. Those three variables are sketching a complicated and constantly changing picture of the world's risk for cardiovascular disease, which now kills more people than any other cause of death. A massive project published Thursday is giving researchers and governments the clearest picture yet of trends of cardiac risk factors over the past generation, and hints at what may lie ahead.
