title: Cardiovascular disease occurrence in two close but different social environments.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cardiovascular diseases estimate to be the leading cause of death and loss of disability-adjusted life years globally. Conventional risk factors for cardiovascular diseases only partly account for the social gradient. The purpose of this study was to compare the occurrence of the most frequent cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular mortality in two close cities, the Twin cities.
  
  
  METHODS
  We focused on the total population in two neighbour and equally sized cities with a population of around 135 000 inhabitants each. These twin cities represent two different social environments in the same Swedish county. According to their social history they could be labelled a "blue-collar" and a "white-collar" city. Morbidity data for the two cities was derived from an administrative health care register based on medical records assigned by the physicians at both hospitals and primary care. The morbidity data presented are cumulative incidence rates and the data on mortality for ischemic heart diseases is based on official Swedish statistics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The cumulative incidence of different cardiovascular diagnoses for younger and also elderly men and women revealed significantly differences for studied cardiovascular diagnoses. The occurrence rates were in all aspects highest in the population of the "blue-collar" twin city for both sexes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study revealed that there are significant differences in risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality between the populations in the studied different social environments. These differences seem to be profound and stable over time and thereby give implication for public health policy to initiate a community intervention program in the "blue-collar" twin city.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden.
authors.forename: Carina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wennerholm
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Grip
authors.forename: Annakarin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Johansson
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nilsson
authors.forename: Marja-Liisa
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Honkasalo
authors.forename: Tomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Faresjö
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017202:Myocardial Ischemia / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology; D012042:Registries; D012307:Risk Factors; D012737:Sex Factors; D012923:Social Class; D012931:Social Environment; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology