Blood pressure, serum cholesterol and smoking habits predicting different manifestations of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular diseases.

1661 men aged 40-59 belonging to two rural communities in Italy were enrolled into a longitudinal study in 1960 and some risk factors were measured. In the next 25 years 779 died from all causes, 309 died from arteriosclerotic cardiovascular diseases, and, in particular, 201 from coronary heart disease (CHD), 96 from stroke (STR) and 12 from peripheral arteriosclerotic disease (PAD). The predictive power of mean blood pressure (MBP), of serum cholesterol (CHOL), of cigarette consumption (CIG) and of age (AGE) was evaluated by the multiple logistic model. Beyond AGE, which was always relevant to prediction, the three major risk factors were significant predictors of all cardiovascular diseases (ACVD) and of CHD; only MBP was a significant predictor of STR whereas the limited number of cases prevented from the possibility to obtain stable and significant coefficients for PAD. Within three different sub-categories of CHD only cases ending-up as sudden deaths were significantly related to the three factors including smoking habits, whereas those manifested as myocardial infarction (without sudden death) and those manifested as chronic coronary heart disease (atypical CHD) were related only to MBP and to CHOL.