Coronary artery disease mortality in relatives of hypertriglyceridemic school children: the Muscatine study.

From 2655 healthy school children participating in the 1973 and 1975 Muscatine Coronary Risk Factor School surveys, two groups of index cases were selected for a detailed family study of coronary mortality: a group with fasting triglyceride levels greater than the ninetieth percentile on both surveys (n = 75) and a group with triglyceride levels less than the tenth percentile on both surveys (n = 47). Coronary mortality in adult (age 30 years or older) first- and second-degree relatives was not different between the two groups. When the families of the high-triglyceride group was further subdivided based on the cholesterol percentile of the index child, greater coronary mortality was observed in the relatives of index cases with high cholesterol (higher than the seventy-fifth percentile). This study suggests that family members of children with elevated triglyceride and low cholesterol levels do not have excess coronary mortality.