Cross-sectional associations between physical activity and selected coronary heart disease risk factors in young adults. The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study.

Objective: Physical activity (PA) may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) by inducing beneficial changes in several risk factors. We studied the associations between PA and a range of risk markers of CHD in young adults.

Methods And Results: We measured serum lipoproteins, oxidized LDL, adipokines, inflammatory markers, metabolic markers, and arginine metabolites in 2,268 individuals (age 24-39 y).

The influence of smoking and homocysteine on subclinical atherosclerosis is modified by the connexin37 C1019T polymorphism - The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study.

Background: A polymorphism C1019T on the connexin37 (Cx37) gene has been found to associate with coronary artery disease. There are conflicting results on which allele confers risk, and the possibility of interactions between the polymorphism and risk factors has been raised. In this study, we examined interactions between the Cx37 polymorphism and common risk factors and their associations to early vascular parameters of atherosclerosis: carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT), and carotid artery compliance (CAC) and brachial artery flow mediated dilatation (FMD).

Depressive symptoms and C-reactive protein: the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study.

Background: We tested the hypothesis that depressive symptoms in healthy young adults would be associated with elevated levels of C-reactive proteins (CRP).

Method: We studied the association between depressive symptoms and CRP in 1201 young adults, as a part of the on-going population-based Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study. Depressive symptoms were determined by responses to a revised version of Beck's Depression Inventory in 1992 and 2001.