Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in a French population

STUDY ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF CARDIOVASCULAR RISK FACTORS: Identification of cardiovascular risk factors and the estimation of their prevalence in different populations is an important aim of preventive medicine. We analysed the data from 58,803 volunteers who were subjected to systematic health examinations in the Centre d'Investigations Préventives et Cliniques in Paris during the period January 1991 to December 1993. In this report we present some results concerning the prevalence of the major cardiovascular risk factors and their associations with sex, age and the presence of hypertension.

The present study clearly shows that before the age of 55 years, the prevalence of risk factors is higher in men than in women, whereas in postmenopausal women the risk-profile increases rapidly, reaching the level of men after the age of 65 years. The presence of multiple risk factors is much higher in hypertensive than in normotensive individuals. We also observed that more than two-thirds of the treated hypertensives had systolic/diastolic blood pressure levels of > 140/90 mmHg. These observations could contribute to the debate regarding the evaluation of global risk and therapeutic strategies in cardiovascular disease prevention.