Lipids and risk of coronary heart disease. The Framingham Study.

Total cholesterol level is significantly related to risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), adjusting for other risk factors in women 50 to 79 years old and in men aged 50 to 64 years, at P < .001. Determining the levels of lipoproteins such as low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and high-density-lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol improves the prediction of risk. Triglycerides are independently related in women at all ages but miss statistical significance in the multivariate studies in men. The total cholesterol-HDL cholesterol ratio is another powerful predictor at all ages in women and is the only lipid predictor independently related to CHD in men 65 to 80 years old. Inspection of the age-specific association of cholesterol with risk in men and women also reveals that the absolute rates of disease worsen with age.