The Rise and Fall of Ischemic Heart Disease

Are Modern Environments Really Bad for Us?: Revisiting the Demographic and Epidemiologic Transitions

“…The observed trends of a number of degenerative diseases for the US during the 20th century are presented in Figure 13. These data clearly show the \rise and fall of ischemic heart disease" (Stallones, 1980), and of cardiovascular mortality more generally, which peaked in the US in the late 1940s or early 1950s. This phenomenon is now internationally established, e.g., in Poland (Zatonski et al, 1998), the Nordic countries (Martelin, 1987), most of Central Europe (Mesle, 2004), various other European countries (Vallin and Mesle, 2004), and Japan (Yanagishita and Guralnick, 1988).…”

Secular trends in ischemic heart disease mortality: regional variation.

“…Mortality rates for CVA were widely divergent in 1950 and were divided into two distinct groups (southeastern and other states), the rates in Virginia being the median rates. However, they converged to a more narrow range in 1976, with the southern states retaining their higher rates and with those for 4. Respiratory cancer mortality increased similarly in both states until around 1968.…”

“…Studies of geographic variations in disease-specific mortality have provided useful epidemiologic clues and might help to elucidate the reasons for the recent decline in IHD mortality. 4 International studies of secular IHD mortality trends have shown marked geographic variability. While mortality has been declining in the United States, Canada, Australia, Finland, Belgium, and Israel, it has been increasing in Sweden, Denmark, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union.2' 7-9 Regional studies in the United States have demonstrated dramatic interstate and intercounty differences in IHD mortality, as well as a recent concentration of high rates in the southeastern United States.…”

George Lyman Duff memorial lecture. Cholesterol revisited. Molecule, medicine, and media.

“…As pointed out by Stallones, "the abruptness of the change was accentuated by a deficit of deaths in 1919, the year that followed the excessive mortality of the influenza pandemic of that time." 21 By the 1950s and 1960s, the mortality rate for CHD had risen so high that the preface of a monograph on Coronary Heart Disease 22 would open with the sentence, "Coronary heart disease may well be termed the black plague' of the 20th century." A strong statement indeedand one that might have gone uncontested, except for the unforeseen appearance of a viral plague in our midst in the 1980s.…”