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Abstract
Background. The Swedish-speaking minority of Finland is unique, because it has a higher socioeconomic status (SES) and longer life expectancy than the Finnish-speaking majority. We hypothesized that this minority may have a lower attack rate of coronary events and analysed whether this could be explained by their higher SES.
Methods. The population-based myocardial infarction (MI) registers recorded 4,845 MI events in Turku during 1988–1998. Individual-level indicators of SES were obtained from Statistics Finland. The population-based FINRISK surveys recorded cardiovascular risk factors and native languages of 10,432 people in 1987, 1997, and 2002.
Results. The age-standardized attack rate of MI was lower among the 35–64-year-old Swedish-speaking men than among Finnish-speaking men (rate ratio 0.66; 95% confidence interval 0.47–0.85) and the difference remained significant after adjustment for SES. The Swedish-speaking inhabitants had higher age-, sex-, and SES-adjusted high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and lower triglycerides, body mass index, and diastolic blood pressure.
Conclusion. The Swedish-speaking inhabitants of Turku had lower MI morbidity and coronary mortality than the Finnish-speaking inhabitants. After controlling for SES, these differences remained significant among men, suggesting that other factors, such as differences in the risk factor profiles may also play a role.
Acknowledgements
The study has been presented as a poster presentation in the EuroPrevent 2009 congress on 7 May 2009. The authors would like to thank the FINAMI Study Group for data collection.
Declaration of interest: The study was supported by the King Gustav V and Queen Victoria's Foundation and by the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.