Study participants derived from the Physicians Health Study-II (PHS-II), a nationwide cohort of US men 50 years and older free of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer with blood collection initiated in December 19952 (link). Men eligible for the current analysis were those younger than 80 at baseline who had complete ascertainment of baseline exposure variables of interest including age (years), blood pressure (mm HG), smoking status (current, not current), and parental history of myocardial infarction before age 60 years (yes/no) and who provided an adequate baseline plasma sample for analysis of total cholesterol (mg/dL), HDLC (mg/dL), and hsCRP (mg/L). In total, 10,724 men had data available on all seven covariates and were included in the primary analysis; 10,407 also had information available on treatment of hypertension or hyperlipidemia, and were included in the secondary analyses.
All men were followed up through March 2008 for a median period of 10.8 years (inter-quartile range 7.8 to 11.2) for incident myocardial infarction, stroke, coronary revascularization, or cardiovascular death; these were adjudicated by an end-points committee after medical record review using standardized criteria. All participants provided written informed consent. The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston, Mass).