Education and Coronary Heart Disease Risk

Abstract

OBJECTIVE Education is inversely associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) risk, however the mechanisms are poorly understood. The study objectives were to evaluate the extent to which rarely measured factors (literacy, time preference, sense of control) and more commonly measured factors (income, depressive symptomatology, body mass index) in the education-CHD literature explain the associations between education and CHD risk. METHOD The study sample included 346 participants, aged 38–47 years (59.5% women), of the New England Family Study birth cohort. Ten-year CHD risk was calculated using the validated Framingham risk algorithm that utilizes diabetes, smoking, blood pressure, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, age and gender. Multivariable regression and mediation analyses were performed. RESULTS Regression analyses adjusting for age, race/ethnicity and childhood confounders (e.g. parental socioeconomic status, intelligence) demonstrated that relative to those with ≥college education, men and women with <high school had 73.7% (95% confidence interval (CI): 29.5, 133.0) and 48.2% (95% CI: 17.5, 86.8) higher 10-year CHD risk, respectively. Mediation analyses demonstrated significant indirect effects for reading comprehension in women (7.2%; 95% CI: 0.7, 19.4) and men (7.2%; 95% CI: 0.8, 19.1), and depressive symptoms (11.8%; 95% CI: 2.5, 26.6) and perceived constraint (6.7%, 95% CI: 0.7, 19.1) in women. CONCLUSIONS Evidence suggested that reading comprehension in women and men, and depressive symptoms and perceived constraint in women, may mediate some of the association between education and CHD risk. If these mediated effects are interpreted causally, interventions targeting reading, depressive symptoms, and perceived constraint could reduce educational inequalities in CHD.