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Martinelli LMB, Mizutani BM, Mutti A, D`elia MPB, Coltro RS, Matsubara BB. Quality of life and its association with cardiovascular risk factors in a Community Health Care Program population. Clinics. 2008;63:783-8. OBJECTIVE:To evaluate quality of life in a population that attended a specific community event on health care education, and to investigate the association of their quality of life with the presence of cardiovascular risk factors INTRODUCTION: Interest in health-related quality of life is growing worldwide as a consequence of increasing rates of chronic disease. However, little is known about the association between quality of life and cardiovascular risk factors. METHODS: This study included 332 individuals. Demographics, blood pressure, body mass index, and casual glycemia were evaluated. The brief version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire on quality of life was given to them. The medians of the scores obtained for the physical, psychological, emotional, and environmental domains were used as cutoffs to define "higher" and "lower" scores. A multinomial logistic regression model was used to define the parameters associated with lower scores. RESULTS: Diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and obesity were associated with lower scores in the physical domain. Dyslipidemia was also associeted with lower scores in the psychological domain. Male gender and regular physical activity had protective effects on quality of life. Aging was inversely associated with decreased quality of life in the environmental domain. CONCLUSION:The presence of cardiovascular risk factors is related to a decreased quality of life. Conversely, male gender and regular physical activity had protective effects on quality of life. These findings suggest that exercising should be further promoted by health-related public programs, with a special focus on women.

IntroductIon. Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the main cause of death in Brazil. objectIve. To evaluate the frequency of CVD risk factors in a population attending a community-based health education intervention. Methods. A retrospective analysis of 428 completed forms with clinical and demographic information of volunteers attending a public health event, held in May 2006. The chi-square test was used for comparisons between proportions and the Student t test for comparisons between groups. Associations between hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM) and clinical variables were analyzed using a multivariate logistic regression model. Significance level was set at p < 0.05. results. Mean age was 57±14 years, and women represented 58% of the total population. Most frequent cardiovascular risk factors included hypertension (39.5%), DM (15.4%) and dyslipidemia (25.8%); however, 8.4, 17.5 and 33.1% of the respondents, respectively, were unaware of these risk factors. Family history of CVD was reported by 41% of the respondents, and only 67% reported having any information about DM or dyslipidemia. Among obese individuals (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m 2 , 27.3% of the population), systolic blood pressure (133±16 mmHg), diastolic blood pressure (84±11.5 mmHg) and casual glucose (124±52.5 mg/dL) were higher than those among non-obese individuals (p < 0.05). There was an association between obesity and dyslipidemia (p = 0.04). Age and BMI were independently associated with presence of hypertension and DM. conclusIon. The high prevalence of modifiable risk factors in this study population suggests a need for public health interventions to promote education and primary prevention programs targeting, mainly, the elderly and overweight individuals.

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