Effects of coronary risk reduction on the pattern of mortality.

Control of coronary risk factors is associated with lower age-specific risks, but people will then live longer, with increased exposure to the higher mortality rates of the elderly. Expected changes in pattern of mortality, based on the 15-year follow-up of men in the Whitehall study, have been calculated. Non-smokers live longer than smokers, but death (when it comes) is more likely to be due to heart attack and less likely to be due to cancer. By contrast a lower level of plasma cholesterol, which is also associated with longer life, is expected to reduce the lifetime risk of fatal heart attack, its place then being taken by a typical mixture of other causes of death.