RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FAMILIAL AGGREGATION OF CORONARY HEART DISEASE AND RISK FACTORS IN THE GENERAL POPULATION1

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Abstract
In the course of an epidemiologic study covering an entire community (Tecumseh, Michigan) adult participants with elevated levels of serum cholesterol, systolic blood pressure or blood glucose after challenge, were compared with subjects of the same sex and age, but without elevated levels of these risk factors, in regard to parental mortality due to coronary heart disease (CHD). Risk factor elevation among children was found to be related to increased parental mortality due to CHD. In the case of fathers and sons, however, such a relationship was found only when paternal deaths occurred relatively early in life. When they occurred at an older age, the relationship appeared to be reversed, mortality due to CHD being higher among fathers of subjects without risk factor elevation. The findings suggest that familial aggregation of high levels of the three risk factors under study play an important role in determining clustering of CHD within families, especially when the disease results in death at a relatively early age. Any familial clustering observed between sons and their fathers who die of the disease later in life may be due to factors as yet unidentified.

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