428 



CELLS, TISSUES, AND ORGANISMS 



middle-aged American men, it is possible to recompute the data in 

 terms of expected distributions of true means. Thus, from the Framing- 

 ham data we now conclude that the risk of future coronary heart dis- 

 ease of men with true mean cholesterol values over 260 would be 4.8 

 (instead of 2.9) times that of men of the same age with lower serum 

 cholesterol levels, and from the Albany data it appears that the risk at 

 mean levels over 275 would be 5.9 (instead of 3.4) times the risk for 

 men with lower levels. 



Atherosclerosis develops silently over the years, and one theory is 

 that it represents an irreversible deposition in the intima of cholesterol 

 from the blood— the resultant of the concentration of cholesterol in the 

 blood acting over time. It is appropriate, then, to compare blood- 

 cholesterol values of men on the Island of Kyushu and of men in 

 Minnesota. These are summarized in Figure 4. The data suggest, of 

 course, that they may hold an important part of the explanation for the 

 differences in atherosclerosis shown in Figure 2. 



The data of Figure 2 disclose an interesting feature when they 

 are plotted semi-logarithmically, as in Figure 5. Here the logarithms of 



260 (- 



220 - 



E 



80 



o 

 a: 



UJ 

 H 

 (/> 



UJ 140 

 O 



X 



o 



100 



2267 MINNESOTANS. 



260 JAPANESE- 



20 



30 



40 



50 



60 



AGE 



Figure 4. Mean serum-cholesterol concentration in men of different ages in 

 Minnesota and on the Island of Kyushu, Japan. The curves are slightly 

 smoothed. The standard deviations are about 45 for the men in Minnesota 

 and about 40 for those on Kyushu. 



