[Study of the prevalence of hypercholesterolemia in Extremadura].

Background: Cardiovascular diseases appear as the first cause of mortality in the Autonomous Community of Extremadura, which represents 48% of all deaths. The rates of hospital morbidity situated them as the 3rd cause of hospital admissions. Because of its part in the production of atherosclerosis and its associations with ischaemic heart disease, the hypercholesterolemia is one of the necessary factors to be controlled in populations, in order to reduce mortality by coronary disease. Therefore, it becomes necessary to know the magnitude and prevalence of serum cholesterol and lipoproteins in our community, for there exist no published data on the matter and as a previous step to the introduction of intervention programmes.

Methods: An observational transversal study, stratified by blood pressure and municipalities, in a population of 30 years or more, is carried out. The size of the sample is 1060 persons; out of them 548 persons are hypertensive and 512 normotensive; these are taken as control group. In this populations, analytic tests are made to know the total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and Triglyceride levels. The TEST, the Odds Ratio Calculation, the means comparison (Student T) and means estimation are used in the analysis.

Results: Out of the total sample, 44. 18% show equal or higher than 240 mg/dl cholesterol levels and 53. 96% show higher than 150 mg/dl LDL-C levels; plasmatic triglyceride concentrations higher than 200 mg/dl appear in 10% of the sample. The estimated cholesterol average in the population of Extremadura, older than 30 years, is 202.9 : 252 in normotensive men and 230. 68: 241.1 in hypertensive men. In women, intervals are 230. 5:241:8, and 231.7 [corrected] 248.5 respectively. The association of hypertension with hypercholesterolemia converges in 46.17%, and frequency in normotensive persons is 43.36%; These differences are almost significant. The indicated coexistence represents an important increase of coronary risk. With regard to age, it is directly associated to cholesterolemia and LDL-C values with an Or of 2.47 and 2.41 respectively. On the contrary. Triglyceridemia acts as an independent variable, when studying its relation with age. For sex variable, a statistically significant association with Triglyceride concentration is proved: These concentrations are higher in women with ar Or of 2.64. With regard to cholesterol levels, there exists a predominance in men of less than 45 years, which is surpassed by women in the age group of 45-60 and becomes equal in normotensive populations after this age. No correlation is found between the pathologic antecedents of cardio/cerebrovascular disease and plasmatic cholesterol levels.

Conclusions: The authors opinion is that these important figures in the Autonomous Community, must compel, on the one hand, to study in further depth the main outside or environmental risk factors which have an influence on cholesterolemia an low density lipoproteins levels in the Community of Extremadura and, on the other hand, they must compel to control hypercholesterolemia as well as other risk factors, which contribute negatively to morbid-mortality of cardiovascular diseases.