[Coronary risk factors among men and women in Iceland. Results from the Reykjavik Study 1967-1985. 1992].

The Reykjavík Study 1967-1985: Risk factors for coronary heart disease mortality have been investigated in a prospective study of 8001 randomly selected Icelandic men and 8468 women. The men were aged 34-64 and the women 34-76 at the time of their first examination. After followup from 2-17 years 1140 (14.2%) of the men and 537 (6.3%) of the women had died. Coronary heart disease accounted for 43% of the mortality among the men, cancer 27% and cerebrovascular disease 7%. This distribution is in contrast to what was found among the women. Coronary heart disease accounted for 19.4% of the mortality, cancer 42.3% while the relative contribution of cerebrovascular mortality was similar. The effects of various factors were assessed simultaneously with multivariate survival analysis using the Cox's proportional hazard model. Age, serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, smoking and systolic blood pressure were all significant independent risk factors for coronary heart disease mortality in both sexes. Fasting blood sugar was of borderline significance, reaching significance among men, but not among women. However, since the women have much lower risk of dying from coronary heart disease than the men the absolute risk associated with each of the risk factors is much lower in the women.