Cardiovascular risk factor profiles of black Africans undergoing coronary angiography at the Nairobi hospital

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