Relationship between stature and coronary heart disease in a German male population

Short stature in men has previously been associated with a higher risk of coronary heart disease. In order to further investigate this observation, the physical characteristics of 4470 German men admitted to the Klinik Roderbirken between 1978 and 1989 with a documented myocardial infarction and with a stenosis greater than or equal to 75% in at least one vessel were compared to those of 711 male controls. Results indicated that the myocardial infarct group was significantly shorter by 1.8 cm than the control group (p less than 0.001). However, discriminant function analysis indicated that height accounted for only 1% of the variance between the cardiac and control patients. Classification analysis further indicated that on the basis of height, the percentage of subjects correctly classified for grouping was no better than 54% for the myocardial infarct patients and 57% for the controls. It was concluded that height exerted a minimal influence on coronary heart disease in this population.