[Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in adult from Talca, Chile]

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has several traditional risk factors (RF), and some of them are potentially modifiable.

To determine the prevalence of most common risk factors in adult population in Talca in Central Chile.

We studied 1007 subjects aged 18 to 74 years (66% women), living in Talca, selected by a probability sampling. They answered a questionnaire and anthropometry, blood pressure, lipid profile and blood glucose were measured.

Thirty seven percent of subjects smoked, 70.1% had a body mass index over 25 kg/m(2) and 41% had an abnormally high circumference. High blood pressure was found in 37% (36% of these subjects were unaware of this condition), 44.5% had hypercholesterolemia, 21.5% had low HDL cholesterol, 40.1% had hypertriglyceridemia and 26.3% had high blood glucose levels.

There is a high prevalence of risk factors for CVD in adult population from Talca. The prevalence of risk factors is higher than that reported by the 2003 National Health Survery.