[The Roman Coronary Disease Prevention Project: effectiveness of intervention and reduction of mortality over a 10-year period]

Abstract

The study has been conducted in 6027 men aged 40-59 at entry, for a total of 3131 treated and 2896 controls, distributed in two pairs of occupational groups. The preventive intervention included actions against some classical coronary risk factor i.e. diet and exceptionally drugs on cholesterol, anti-hypertensive drugs in hypertensives, anti-smoking advice in smokers, diet and increase of leisure physical activity in men with overweight. The treatment has lasted 6 years and has been accompanied by a significant reduction of the estimated multivariate coronary risk in treatment groups reaching a peak after 4 years (-26.5%) and a final value of -20.5% after 6 years. Coronary mortality in 10 years (the last 4 without treatment and risk factors measurements) has shown a maximum difference between treated and controls after 6 years (-29.5%) whereas at the end of 10 years it was of -23.5% (p less than 0.1). The final rates of coronary mortality were 34.1 per 1000 in controls and 26.1 per 1000 in treated men (benefit 8 per 1000). All causes mortality after 10 years was 94.8 per 1000 in controls and 89.1 per 1000 in treated groups with a benefit of 5.7 per 1000.