Spouse concordance of obesity, blood pressures and serum risk factors for atherosclerosis.

Familial aggregation of atherosclerotic risk factors is well known, however inter-spouse relation of the risk factors has remained controversial. As spouses are not blood-related, any risk factor relation probably does not reflect genetic factors, but the environmental factors to which the couple is exposed. Moreover, the effect of assortative marriage should be considered. The present study enrolled 97 married couples who attended a general health screening in 1993 in a mountain village of Japan. The screening was conducted between April and November at a single outpatient clinic in the village. Data on weight, height, blood pressure (BP), serum risk factors for atherosclerosis and marriage year were obtained as part of the screening programme. They were divided into three groups according to marital duration. The simple correlation coefficients for systolic/diastolic BP between the spouses were 0.22/0.19. The coefficients declined to 0.05/0.08 after controlling. The correlation coefficients for serum lipoproteins were low and between -0.06 and 0.11 after controlling. The correlation coefficients for blood sugar were -0.05 and -0.13 after controlling. In subgroup analyses stratified by marital duration, the correlation coefficients for BP, body mass index (BMI) and blood sugar were increased in both the short and long marital duration groups. The correlation coefficients for high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and triglycerides increased with longer marital duration. Although a larger population study will be needed to confirm these findings, these results suggest the presence of inter-spouse correlation and reflect the influence of assortative marriage and environmental factors on spouse concordance.