Background: The relation between serum total cholesterol (TC) and cardiovascular disease in women and in the elderly is unclear, especially in Asian populations.
Methods and results: We examined this relation in the largest-scale pooled analysis of the Japanese population, the Evidence for Cardiovascular Prevention from Observational Cohorts in Japan (EPOCH-JAPAN) study. A total of 65 594 participants who were 40 to 89 years of age and did not have a past history of cardiovascular disease were examined. Cox proportional-hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios for death from total stroke, cerebral infarction, intracranial cerebral hemorrhage, or coronary heart disease. The mean follow-up period was 10.1 years, with the number of deaths from total stroke, cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage, and coronary heart disease being 875, 457, 212, and 374, respectively. The participants were divided into 2 age groups: middle-aged (40 to 69 years; mean age 55 years) and elderly (70 to 89 years; mean age 75 years). In men, the multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios for coronary heart disease in the highest TC category (≥6.21 mmol/L) compared with the lowest category (<4.14 mmol/L) were 2.52 (95% confidence interval: 1.15-5.07) in middle-aged participants and 2.77 (1.09-7.03) in elderly participants. In women, the hazard ratios of the highest TC category (≥6.72 mmol/L) compared with the lowest category (<4.66 mmol/L) were 3.20 (1.44-7.09) in middle-aged participants and 1.02 (0.42-2.49) in elderly participants. TC levels were not associated with cerebral infarction in any age or sex group and were associated negatively with total stroke and cerebral hemorrhage.
Conclusion: High serum TC levels are associated with coronary heart disease in middle-aged Japanese men and women, but evidence in elderly Japanese individuals is still limited.
Keywords: cholesterol; coronary heart disease; pooled analysis; stroke.