Relation Between Body Height and Self-Reported Myocardial Infarction in Germany

BACKGROUND: Several studies have reported an association between body height and the incidence of myocardial infarction. METHODS: We analyzed data from regional and national health surveys that were conducted from 1984-1992 within the framework of the German Cardiovascular Prevention Study. Eligible survey candidates were males and females with German nationality in the age group 25-69 years. The total number of subjects in our study comprised 12,447 males and 13,355 females. The assessment of whether a respondent had ever undergone a myocardial infarction was based on self-reporting by the subject. Multiple logistic regression analyses, controlling for several confounding factors, were carried to calculate odds ratios to estimate th effect of body height on the prevalence of self-reported myocardial infarction, comparing each body-height quintile with the shortest group, which served as the reference group. RESULTS: Without adjusting for confounding variables, a strong association between body height and self-reported myocardial infarction was found in both genders (trend test: p < 0.001), with an unadjusted odds ratio (OR) of 0.41 for males and 0.33 for females. After adjusting for age, the ORs increased to 0.67 (p < 0.05) in males and 0.58 (p < 0.05) in females for quintile 5 (tallest) compared with quintile 1 (shortest). After an additional adjustment for community size, region, social class, and number of CVD risk factors, the ORs of myocardial infarction for quintile 5 (males OR = 0.78, females OR = 0.68) were higher than those for quintile 1, but the results were no longer statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the lack of statistical significance, we suggest that the differences in the prevalence of myocardial infarction for the five height quintiles cannot be explained by confounding factors alone. The underlying causes for such height-specific differences remain unknown.