Relationships between body mass index, cardiovascular mortality, and risk factors: a report from the SCORE investigators.

Background: Although cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the biggest global cause of death, CVD mortality is falling in developed countries. There is concern that this trend may be offset by increasing levels of obesity.

Design: We used the Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) data set to examine relationships between body mass index (BMI), conventional risk factors and CVD mortality.

How much does HDL cholesterol add to risk estimation? A report from the SCORE Investigators.

Background: Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE), the risk estimation system recommended by the European guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention, estimates 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease mortality based on age, sex, country of origin, systolic blood pressure, smoking status and either total cholesterol (TC) or TC/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) ratio. As, counterintuitively, these two systems perform very similarly, we have investigated whether incorporating HDL-C and TC as separate variables improves risk estimation.

Methods: The study consisted of 57,302 men and 47,659 women.