THE HIGH-RISK APPROACH TO REDUCING CHOLESTEROL: THE OSLO STUDY GROUP
Norwegians, like Scots, feature highly in studies of heart disease. The Oslo Study Group screened 16,202 men aged forty to forty-nine years for Coronary risk factors. They then selected 1,232 healthy men at high risk (because of smoking and high cholesterol levels) to see whether lowering serum cholesterol and stopping smoking would reduce their heart attack rate. The men had initial blood cholesterol levels of 290-380mg/dl and 80 percent of them smoked cigarettes. Half were given health advice (the treatment group), and half (the control group) were not.
After five years, the cholesterol levels were 13 percent lower, and the number of cigarettes smoked each day 45 percent lower in the treatment group than in the control group. These were linked with a 47 percent reduction in fatal and nonfatal heart attacks in the treatment group. The statistics were clear: There were twenty-two nonfatal heart attacks per one thousand men over the five years in the treatment group, and thirty-five in the controls. The corresponding figures for deaths were twenty-six and thirty-eight.
Detailed analysis of the Oslo study suggested that the improvement in the rate for heart attacks and deaths were mainly due to cholesterol lowering, and less linked with smoking cessation.
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