Coronary heart disease and socio-economic factors in Edinburgh and north Glasgow

Scotland has one of the highest rates of mortality from cardiovascular disease in the world, and considerable interest has been expressed as to the determinants of these high rates. This paper is concerned more with the role of social status. Published mortality statistics show this relationship. Strong associations have been found between coronary mortality rates and a range of socio-economic factors across local government districts in Scotland. In this paper the effect of social factors upon coronary heart disease morbidity will be determined by a case-control analysis of a cross-sectional sample of Scottish people. Various measures of social hierarchy will be used, as well as marital status, to subdivide the sample. Further questions that will be addressed are the extent to which the effects of these social factors overlap, and how much of the effect of each social factor can be explained by confounding with more conventional risk factors for coronary heart disease. -from Authors