Question

Why are some likely to have prevalent CHD? I completed this chart I just need to understand it, can you help?

Patient Characteristic*	History of CHD (n = 194)	No History of CHD (n = 4240)	p-value*
Age, years	57.48	49.58	<0.001
Systolic blood pressure, mmHg	144.99	132.35	<0.001
Diastolic blood pressure, mmHg	87.14	82.90	<0.001
Total serum cholesterol, mg/dL	243.20	236.70	0.0486
Body mass index	26.83	25.80	0.0006

Answer 1

In Medical sciences, elevated levels of blood pressure (which can be seen in the table) and cholesterol levels are seen to be the leading causes for CHD. CHD is usually observed in people with older people with its risk increasing with age.

Now let's take a look at the given table which shows the average patient characteristics comparing the two groups. It can be seen from the table that the average age for people with history of CHD is 57.48 years as compared to 49.58 years for people with no history of CHD. The blood pressure and cholesterol levels are significantly higher for people having a history with the disease.

Also, another point to notice here is that the body mass index does not seem to be a contributor of CHD which is same for both the groups.