Life habits and cardiovascular risk in a group of bank employees in Rome

Background. For the past thirty years, many countries, especially the USA, have been performing clinical and laboratory studies to establish the most prominent disease risk factors, in particular those involved in cardiovascu lar diseases. The main aim of these studies is to reduce disease related ri sks by intervening at an early age. Methods. We studied 305 patients, 198 males and 107 females, ail employees in Rome, mean age 40.8 years (+/-8.22), enrolled from September 1988 to Dec ember 1989. We measured the main anthropometric parameters and performed ot olaryngologic and ocular examination, a telecardiogram and an EKG; the foll owing analyses were performed: hemochrome, ESR uric acid, azotemia, glycemi a, AST, ALT, gamma GT, bilirubinemia, proteic electrophoresis, triglyceride mia, total cholesterolemia, HDL cholesterolemia, creatinine, urine examinat ion, Pap-Test for women. Lifestyle habits that might be considered cardiova scular disease risk factors were considered and hygienic eating habits were suggested. Seven years later, in 1997, 100 of these patients were randomly selected (51 man and 49 women) and underwent the same clinical and laborat ory tests as before. Results. The results suggest a deep correlation between lifestyles and the increase of some cardiovascular risk factors. Conclusions. The authors believe that this study can be of some help in gui ding future preventive medicine interventions that may be carried out on th is population sample.