Prevalence of cardiovascular pathologies in elderly population living in an industrialized area, compared to a control population residing in a rural area.

The development of cardiovascular pathologies is potentially connected to the surrounding environment, partly due to purely environmental factors, like exposition to pollutions, or anthropological ones, like the type of manual or stressing working activities. The relevant literature has already widely discussed the correlation between the acute and chronic exposition to atmospheric pollutants of different types and the pathogenetic events, such as the atherogenesis, thrombosis, and hypertension, The present study intends to verify this idea on a larger population exposed to different geographical conditions, comparing an agricultural village (Pachino-Siracusa) with an industrialized area (Augusta-Siracusa), both having identical sanitary services of basic importance. On the basis of the specific rates of hospitalizations, we compared the prevalence of cardiovasular pathologies in the resident populations. These studies confirmed the negative influence of the risk factors deriving from the environmental pollutions even on the cardiovascular aging, displaying an increased rate of hospitalization for angina pectoris, myocardial infarction and cardiac arrhytmias in the industrialized population.
(Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)