[Changes in the panorama of risk factors in heart and vascular diseases]

The level of risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease has dropped markedly in Finland during the past 20 years. In a follow-up covering eastern Finland, serum cholesterol and blood pressure values were found to have improved manifestly during the 1970s, and the number of smokers to have decreased. The beneficial trend appeared to have levelled off at the beginning of the 1980s, but the past five years have witnessed a manifest lowering of the risk factor level, particularly regarding serum cholesterol values, and the differences in the incidence of risk factors between different parts of the country have diminished.