education does not always correlate with less CVD

REACH: More education does not always correlate with less CVD

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010 | Reed Miller

Atlanta, GA - Men with more education have fewer cardiovascular events than less educated men in relatively wealthy countries, but this relationship does not hold in less developed countries and is reversed among women, new research from the Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health (REACH) registry shows [1].

REACH is an ongoing prospective study of 67 888 subjects with either established atherothrombotic disease or multiple atherothrombotic risk factors in 44 countries. Dr Abhinav Goyal (Emory School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA) and colleagues categorized 61 332 REACH subjects into four classes based on self-reported attained education level: zero to eight years, nine to 12 years, trade or technical school, and university. The researchers stratified 23-month follow-up outcomes by gender and world region, either low- to middle-income nations (Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and most of Asia) or high-income nations (US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia). Results of the study are published online September 7, 2010 in Circulation.

Goyal told heartwire, "Most of the studies that have been conducted in the past 20 years have been conducted in the developed world and Western countries. We got good information from those studies, indicating that higher education protects against cardiovascular events [in the developed world], but the scope of cardiovascular disease on a global scale has shifted such that over 80% of the burden in the world from cardiovascular disease is happening in developing economies or low- and middle-income countries."/.../