Data from 61 studies
More than 1,000,000 participants
In the 1990s, CTSU established a collaborative meta-analysis of data on over one million individuals in prospective observational studies of blood pressure, cholesterol and cause-specific mortality conducted throughout the world, and this provided - for the first time - appropriately reliable and unbiased estimates of the age- and sex-specific relevance of those risk factors to particular causes of death.
During 13 million person-years of follow-up there were 120,000 deaths including 55,000 vascular deaths (34,000 ischaemic heart disease, 12,000 stroke, 10,000 other vascular).
The specific aim of the Prospective Studies Collaboration was to establish statistically reliable estimates of the effects of established risk factors (particularly blood pressure and cholesterol, but also body mass index and diabetes) on the risks of dying from specific vascular diseases in different circumstances (for example, at different ages, and at different levels of other risk factors).
Blood pressure and vascular mortality:
- Age-specific relevance of usual blood pressure to vascular mortality: a meta-analysis of individual data for one million adults in 61 prospective studies. Lancet 2002
- Blood Pressure PowerPoint slides
Body Mass Index (BMI) and cause-specific mortality:
- Body-mass index and cause-specific mortality in 900 000 adults: collaborative analyses of 57 prospective studies. Lancet 2009
- BMI PowerPoint slides
Cholesterol and vascular mortality
- Blood cholesterol and vascular mortality by age, sex, and blood pressure: a meta-analysis of individual data from 61 prospective studies with 55 000 vascular deaths. Lancet 2007
- Cholesterol PowerPoint slides
The Prospective Studies Collaboration was supported by the UK Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, and European Union (EU BIOMED).