A Romanian contribution to the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular diseases

Abstract

The paper presents the scientific activity developed in the last thirty-five years by a team of cardiologists, internists, biologists, biochemists, biomathematicians and computer specialists in the "N. Gh. Lupu" Institute of Internal Medicine (Bucharest) in the field of epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular diseases. The main places of the epidemiological surveys were the Danube Delta (among fishermen) and the Gurghiu Valley (in the Eastern Carpathians) among lumberjacks, two collectivities selected by the nature of their diet in order to prove the role of fat saturation in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. In 1971 this team began one of the long-lasting projects of primary prevention of coronary heart disease (on 10,000 middle-aged men) which is now at its 25-year follow-up ("The Bucharest Multifactorial Prevention Trial of Coronary Heart Disease"). The analysis of this activity refers to more than hundred works of the team.