Studies of cardiovascular disease and cause-specific mortality trends in Japanese-American men living in Hawaii and risk factor comparisons with other Japanese populations in the Pacific region: a review.

The Honolulu Heart Program (HHP) is a long-term prospective epidemiologic study of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in male descendants of Japanese migrants to Hawaii. The article is a review of data from recent and past HHP studies relevant to the Seventeenth Pacific Science Congress symposium "Changes in Disease Patterns in the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia." The Ni-Hon-San Study, which compared CVD rates and risk factors in Japanese men living in Japan, Hawaii (HHP), and California, showed that coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke mortality rates in Hawaii were intermediate between rates in Japan and California. Gradients in CVD risk factors were similar to the gradients in disease rates. From 1966 to 1984 trends in incidence rates for CHD, stroke, and cause-specific mortality were compared for the 8006 participants and 3130 non-participants in the HHP. CHD and stroke rates declined by about 40% for the total HHP cohort. There was a larger decline for CHD mortality (over 60%) in the nonparticipants. There was also a much greater decline in total mortality and cancer mortality rates in the nonparticipants. The results of the reviewed studies show that the subjects, although sharing a common ethnic background, experience different rates of disease when living in diverse geographic and cultural locales. This finding supports evidence that environmental and behavioral factors influence chronic disease rates and provides a basis for intervention and prevention. The finding that nonparticipants in epidemiologic studies can show different incidence trends suggests that caution should be used in interpreting trends limited only to participants.