Family history of coronary heart disease and pre-clinical carotid artery atherosclerosis in African Americans and whites: The ARIC study

✍ Scribed by Jeannette T. Bensen; Rongling Li; Richard G. Hutchinson; Michael A. Province; Herman A. Tyroler

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 108 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0741-0395
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2272(1999)16:2<165::aid-gepi4>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

The association between family history of coronary heart disease (CHD) and morbidity and mortality due to atherosclerotic sequelae, although well documented in population-based samples of whites, has been little studied in African Americans. Less is known about the relationship between a family history of CHD and pre-clinical atherosclerosis. We report the relation between family history of CHD, summarized in a family risk score (FRS), and asymptomatic atherosclerosis at the extracranial carotid arteries, measured by B-mode ultrasound. The FRS was assessed in relatives of 3,034 African Americans and 9,048 white probands aged 45 to 64 years, in the four community-based cohorts of the ARIC Study. The analyses were restricted to individuals free of clinically manifest CHD. The distribution of CHD FRS by ethnic-gender groups was right skewed, with slightly higher mean values for white than African-American males, and for African-American than white females. In a series of multivariate linear regression mod-