Association between socioeconomic status and cardiovascular risk

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the major health problems of the modern societies. Socioeconomic status (SES) is an important predictor of CVD and its risk factors.

To examine whether SES is related to an increased cardiovascular (CV) risk in the population of southwestern Poland.

The study population comprised 2027 subjects, including 929 (45.8%) men and 1098 (54.2%) women participating in the WOBASZ study. From this population, we selected a subgroup of 1821 subjects free from CVD, including 816 men and 1005 women, all with defined SES. Their CV risk was estimated using the SCORE risk algorithm and an analysis of the relationship between SES indicators and the SCORE risk was performed.

We found a negative correlation between the SCORE risk and SES (p = 0.0005). In the overall study group and among participating women, the SCORE risk was significantly lower among subjects with high SES (SES score > 12). This relation was also noted in men and women aged 30–39 years (p = 0.02), women aged 30–39 years (p = 0.0001) and 40–49 years (p = 0.04), and in men aged 70–74 years (p = 0.046). With an increase in SES, the proportion of high CVD risk subjects decreased significantly in the overall study population and in those aged 30–39 years (p = 0.01). Similar relations were observed in women in the entire age range and those aged 30–39 years (p = 0.01). We found that SES had a significant effect on the rate of high CVD risk in all study subgroups aged 30–39 years (odds ratio 0.57, 95% CI 0.39–0.85, p = 0.005 in men and women overall; odds ratio: 0.6, 95% CI 0.37–0.99, p = 0.045 in men; and odds ratio: 0.4, 95% CI 0.16–0.99, p = 0.01 in women).

Socioeconomic status was found to be a predictor of high CVD mortality risk in men and women aged 30–39 years.