Life habits and cardiovascular risk in a group of bank employees in Rome

For the past thirty years, many countries, especially the USA, have been performing clinical and laboratory studies to establish the most prominent disease risk factors, in particular those involved in cardiovascular diseases. The main aim of these studies is to reduce disease related risks by intervening at an early age.

We studied 305 patients, 198 males and 107 females, all employees in Rome, mean age 40.8 years (+/- 8.22), enrolled from September 1988 to December 1989. We measured the main anthropometric parameters and performed otolaryngologic and ocular examination, a telecardiogram and an EKG; the following analyses were performed: hemochrome, ESR uric acid, azotemia, glycemia, AST, ALT, gamma GT, bilirubinemia, proteic electrophoresis, triglyceridemia, total cholesterolemia, HDL cholesterolemia, creatinine, urine examination, Pap-Test for women. Lifestyle habits that might be considered cardiovascular disease risk factors were considered and hygienic eating habits were suggested. Seven years later, in 1997, 100 of these patients were randomly selected (51 man and 49 women) and underwent the same clinical and laboratory tests as before.

The results suggest a deep correlation between lifestyles and the increase of some cardiovascular risk factors.

The authors believe that this study can be of some help in guiding future preventive medicine interventions that may be carried out on this population sample.