Social circumstances in childhood and cardiovascular disease mortality: prospective observational study of Glasgow University students

Abstract

Students attending the University of Glasgow between 1948–68 were invited to participate in a medical examination carried out by the student health department.3 Data collected included sociodemographic data, details of health behaviours and measured blood pressure. Participants were traced through the National Health Service Central Register. Full details are reported elsewhere.3The social class of the fathers of the students was coded to the registrar general's classification, with a combined social class III grouping being used as the distinction between III non-manual and III manual was not introduced until near the end of the recruitment period. Deaths up to 31 December 1998 were included in the analyses. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the association between father's social class and CVD, cancer and other (non-CVD, non-cancer) mortality, adjusted for age and quintile of year of birth (to control for any cohort effect). Adjusted models for CVD included: smoking (no, 1–10, ⩾11 cigarettes per day) and systolic blood pressure (mm Hg).