Apples for Health- Low income: Heart disease risk factor

Low income: Heart disease risk factor

ROCHESTER, N.Y., June 17 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say low socioeconomic status needs to considered when treating heart disease.

The study, published in the American Heart Journal, finds the current model used to assess risk -- Framingham Risk Scoring -- underestimates the risk of death from cardiac disease, but this discrepancy is cleared up in the statistical analysis when income and education are added to the list of risk factors.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of adding socioeconomic status to the typical risk assessment in the United States," lead author Dr. Kevin Fiscella of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, says in a statement.

The researchers define low socioeconomic status as having less than a high school education or living on an annual income of approximately $16,000 for a single person or $27,000 for a family of three.

The study is based on data from two sources -- 12,562 men and women from an ongoing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study and 10,300 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey linked to the National Death Index.

About 30 percent of the people in both samples met the criteria for low socioeconomic status.