Myocardial infarction events and cardiovascular risk factor levels in Finnish- and Swedish-speaking populations of Finland.

BACKGROUND. The Swedish-speaking minority of Finland is unique, because it has a higher socioeconomic status (SES) and longer life expectancy than the Finnish-speaking majority. We hypothesized that this minority may have a lower attack rate of coronary events and analysed whether this could be explained by their higher SES. METHODS. The population-based myocardial infarction (MI) registers recorded 4,845 MI events in Turku during 1988-1998. Individual-level indicators of SES were obtained from Statistics Finland. The population-based FINRISK surveys recorded cardiovascular risk factors and native languages of 10,432 people in 1987, 1997, and 2002. RESULTS. The age-standardized attack rate of MI was lower among the 35-64-year-old Swedish-speaking men than among Finnish-speaking men (rate ratio 0.66; 95% confidence interval 0.47-0.85) and the difference remained significant after adjustment for SES. The Swedish-speaking inhabitants had higher age-, sex-, and SES-adjusted high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and lower triglycerides, body mass index, and diastolic blood pressure. Conclusion. The Swedish-speaking inhabitants of Turku had lower MI morbidity and coronary mortality than the Finnish-speaking inhabitants. After controlling for SES, these differences remained significant among men, suggesting that other factors, such as differences in the risk factor profiles may also play a role.