Second nation-wide study of atherosclerosis in infants, children and young adults in Japan

This paper reports the results of the second nation-wide cooperative study of atherosclerosis in young Japanese, aged from 1 month to 39 years, who were autopsied between 1991 and 1995. Atherosclerotic lesions in 1066 aortas and 974 coronary arteries were classified into fatty streaks, fibrous plaques and complicated lesions and quantificated with the point-counting method. The results of this study were compared with those of the former study, which was conducted 13 years earlier in almost the same fashion as this study. Atherosclerosis of aorta, which was determined by surface involvement (SI) of atherosclerotic lesions and atherosclerotic index (AI), increased with age in both sexes of the former and the present studies and their tendency for the progression of the extent of atherosclerotic lesions appeared to be similar. In the coronary arteries, the mean values of SI and AI in the males of the present study were greater significantly than those in the male of the former studies and in the female of the both studies in the third and fourth decades. This difference suggests that atherosclerotic lesions are increasing in young Japanese males. It also suggests that these subjects may be increasingly susceptible to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease with increasing age.