MYOCARDIAL DISEASE IN A RURAL POPULATION IN JAMAICA.

An epidemiological study of the prevalence of heart disease in a representative rural population in Jamaica was carried out in 1962. Six hundred adults aged 35-64 years were selected at random from an agricultural population of which a census had been taken previously, and this report describes the clinical and electrocardiographic findings in 548 of these subjects.It is clear from the results of this survey that symptoms and physical signs of heart disease are common in this population; electrocardiographic evidence of myocardial damage-frequently interpreted as due to myocardial ischaemia-has also an unexpectedly high prevalence for an ethnic group in which a number of careful pathological studies have shown myocardial infarction and occlusive coronary artery disease to be comparatively rare.Much of the heart disease found was wholly unexplained, and it is thought that many of these subjects may have a type of cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology. A number of reports from the tropics and subtropics have drawn attention to this problem, but this is, so far as is known, the first investigation of its epidemiology.