Table 1.
Baseline characteristics across categories of a lifestyle score in the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study (1991–1996)
| Unfavorable Lifestyle N = 5730 |
Intermediate Lifestyle N = 11,757 |
Favorable Lifestyle N = 8846 |
P-value** | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age, years^ | 57.3 (7.4) | 58.0 (7.7) | 58.1 (7.6) | < 0.0001 |
| Gender ¤ | < 0.0001 | |||
| Male, % | 34.6 | 36.6 | 42.4 | |
| Female, % | 65.4 | 63.4 | 57.6 | |
| Education ¤ | < 0.0001 | |||
| Elementary % | 48.2 | 41.2 | 35.9 | |
| Secondary % | 33.8 | 36.1 | 35.8 | |
| University/college degree, % | 17.9 | 22.6 | 28.3 | |
| Parental history of MI, % ¤ | 31.2 | 32.6 | 31.7 | 0.12 |
| History of Hypertension ¤ | 64.2 | 60.0 | 58.3 | < 0.0001 |
| History of Diabetes Mellitus ¤ | 5.2 | 3.5 | 3.8 | < 0.0001 |
| Body-mass Index, kg/m2 ^ | 27.3 (5.2) | 25.4 (3.6) | 25.0 (2.9) | < 0.0001 |
| Lipid Levels* | ||||
| LDL Cholesterol, mg/dl^ | 4.24 (1.03) | 4.16 (0.99) | 4.14 (0.97) | 0.034 |
| HDL Cholesterol, mg/dl^ | 1.30 (0.34) | 1.40 0.38) | 1.42 0.37) | < 0.0001 |
| Triglycerides, mg/dl # | 1.31 (0.97–1.82) | 1.15 (0.87–1.59) | 1.09 (0.82–1.51) | 0.0001 |
| Lipid-lowering Medication, % ¤ | 2.3 | 2.2 | 2.1 | 0.67 |
| C-Reactive Protein* # | 1.9 (0.9–4.2) | 1.3 (0.7–2.7) | 1.1 (0.6–2.2) | 0.0001 |
| HbA1C* # | 4.9 (4.6–5.3) | 4.8 (4.5–5.1) | 4.7 (4.4–5.0) | 0.23 |
* Only subjects from the MDC cardiovascular cohort (N = 4995)
^Continuous variables are expressed as mean values with standard deviation in parenthesis. Differences in mean values were tested using one-way ANOVA
#Skewed continuous values are expressed as median with interquartile range in parenthesis. Differences in median were tested using Kruskal-Wallis ranksum test
¤ The distribution of subjects across the categorical variables are expressed as frequency (%). The difference in distribution was tested using the chi-square test
** P-values < 0.05 were considered as statistically significant