| dc.description.abstract | Coronary artery disease is a growing epidemic on the African Continent. Indeed, over the
last thirty years morbidity and mortality due to cardiovascular disease have increased
rapidly in developing countries. I The risk factors that have been shown to influence the
development of CAD in white populations are hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, low
levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, cigarette smoking, diabetes
mellitus, age, and male gender. Moreover, the large variation in the average extent of
coronary atherosclerosis among black populations, as well as among white populati
the prospective. The larger retrospective arm showed that the group with CAD, compared
to the Normal group, was significantly older, with a higher mean age of 54.4 years
compared to 49.8 years (P=O.005); had significantly more males, with a male to female
ratio of 5.5:1 compared to 2.3:1 (P=O.045); had a very significantly larger proportion of
diabetics (38.5% compared to 12%, P=O.0002), and also had a significantly larger
proportion of patients with dyslipidemia (67.3% compared to 35.9%, P=O.0003). The
percentage of hypertensives was high in both groups, with 65.4% in the CAD group and
62% in the Normal group being hypertensive (P=O.68). The percentage of smokers was
small in both groups, being 15.4% and 13% respectively. Smoking, increased BMI,
alcohol use, and increased IVS were found each found to be distributed equally in both
groups. In addition, the WHR and WC each did not differ significantly between the two
groups studied.
CONCLUSIONS
. The risk factors found to be most strongly associated with presence of angiographically detected
CAD in the population studied were Diabetes Mellitus, Dyslipidemia, Age and
Male Gender. There was a high prevalence of hypertension, with equal distribution in
both groups under study; hence this risk factor was not discriminatory for C~D. There
was a low prevalence of cigarette smoking in this particular study; it was not predictive
of CAD | en_US |
| dc.description.department | a
Department of Psychiatry, University of Nairobi, ; bDepartment of Mental Health, School of Medicine,
Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya | |
