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Fight against smoking, fat helping to reduce incidence of heart attack

PARIS: The campaign against smoking and fatty diets is making headway in reducing the incidence of heart attacks, according to a major UN study conducted in 21 countries.

The research, reported in Saturday's issue of the British medical weekly The Lancet, spells out the main reasons where there has been a significant fall in cardiac arrests and coronary deaths in developed countries.

The project, the Multinational Monitoring of Trends and Determinants in Cardiovascular Disease (MONICA), was launched Organisation (WHO).

Its goal was to compare incidents of heart attacks and fatalities between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, looking at men and women aged 35 to 64. MONICA's first findings, published in May last year, revealed a significant decline in developed western countries, especially in Scandinavia, the United States and Australia.

By contrast, cases of heart attacks rose in China, the former Yugoslavia and parts of Russia. The second part of the MONICA report now addresses the causes for this fall.

The main reasons: in countries where there was a decline, men smoked less and, among women, blood pressure was lower. Although body weight inched up over the period, cholesterol levels were generally lower because of wiser eating. The biggest factor was better treatment available in western countries for people with heart problems.

More effective drugs became available to prevent clogging of the arteries, as well as agents that break up blood clots, and much-improved techniques in coronary arterial surgery were introduced.

Together, these tools may have accounted for more than half of the improvement, according to French specialists who worked on the project. Doctors said the hard data testified to the need to press on with awareness campaigns against smoking and fatty food.

The results "endorse prevention campaigns based on changing ... modifiable risk factors," said Kari Kuulasmaa of Finland, a leading participant in the project.

"They also encourage us to look for other important factors that drive the development of heart disease in the community." The countries that took part in MONICA were: Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, East Germany (until 1990), Italy, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and the former Yugoslavia.ÑAFP