Purpose: To provide information on the incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the offspring of the original cohort from the Framingham Heart Study.
Patients and methods: From 1972 to 1974, offspring of the original participants in the Framingham Heart Study underwent a baseline examination for standard cardiovascular risk factors. At entry into the study, these offspring were 30 to 59 years old and free of CHD. They were followed for 12 years, during which time 156 of 1,663 men and 55 of 1,714 women developed CHD.
Results: In a multivariate proportional hazards model, CHD was significantly associated with age, lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels, and number of cigarettes smoked. Fasting glucose levels and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were highly associated with CHD in men, but borderline in women, while triglycerides and very-low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were not significantly associated with CHD after adjustment for HDL-C and glucose. Blood pressure medication was used in half of the hypertensive individuals, and systolic pressure was associated with CHD in women only.
Conclusions: This study confirms the importance of the common CHD risk factors of cigarette smoking and LDL-C, and extends the prognostic role of HDL-C in a middle-aged cohort. The impact of blood pressure, with or without use of hypertensive medications, was reduced in this study, and the data suggest that this attenuation was due to successful treatment.