Vegetarians are 32 per cent less likely to be hospitalised or die from heart disease than people who eat meat and fish, scientists at England's Oxford University say.

The researchers followed almost 45,000 adults, one-third of them vegetarians, for an average of 11.5 years and accounted for factors such as their age, whether they smoked, alcohol consumption, physical activity, education and socio-economic background, according to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Eat yourself healthy ... a vegetarian diet can reduce the risk of heart disease. Credit:Rohan Thomson

"Probably most of the difference is accounted for by the fact that the vegetarians had lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure," Francesca Crowe, one of the authors of the study and a nutritional epidemiologist at Oxford, said. "Diet is an important determinant of heart disease."

Cardiovascular disease is the biggest cause of death in developed countries and accounted for an estimated 17.3 million deaths in 2008 worldwide, including 6.2 million deaths from strokes, according to the World Health Organisation.