Series 5 - Department of Veterans Affairs Project: Atherosclerosis Study

3.32 m of textual records

In 1952, the Canadian Department of Veterans Affairs authorized a research project to study coronary atherosclerosis, a leading cause of death among veterans [1]. This ten-year study was one of the first to look into the link of blood lipids to heart disease. It was centred at Cardiology Clinic of Sunnybrook Hospital, a teaching hospital of the University of Toronto. The Director of the Cardiology Clinic, Dr. H. E. Rykert appointed doctors J. A. Little and H. M. Shanoff to design and conduct the Atherosclerosis Project. Additional funding was also received from the Ontario Heart Foundation (OHF). A lipid laboratory for determining serum free and ester cholesterol and phospholipids with high accuracy was established at Sunnybrook Hospital. Lipoproteins were determined at the Ultracentrifuge Laboratory at McGill University. “The purpose of the project …was to study a carefully selected group of [male] veterans with proven coronary heart disease. It was proposed to follow these patients over a ten-year period and attempt to correlate the serum lipid factors with the course of their disease. A control group of male veterans without clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis [were] studied in comparison” [2]. Seventy-seven male veterans with proven coronary atherosclerosis and a control group of approximately 25 male veterans were studied. Patients ranged in age from 30 to 83. By the end of the ten-year period the group had been reduced to less than 50% of the original number due to deaths.

There were approximately 25 subjects in each decade from the fourth to eighth. These studies showed that patients with coronary heart disease have higher average serum lipid levels than ‘normal’ subjects especially in the younger decades. During the follow up period after myocardial infarction there appeared to be no relationship between survival and concentrations of total serum cholesterol and …lipoproteins” [3].

While the project ran from 1952 to 1962, articles and correspondence continued to be generated by Dr. Little and his colleagues as interest in the project continued well into the 1970s.

NOTES

1. Other hospitals running projects were Queen Mary Hospital, Montreal, Westminster Hospital, London, Ont., Shaugnessey Hospital, Vancouver and Camp Hill Hospital, Halifax. However the Project at Sunnybrook did not have any interaction with these. (Dr. J.A. Little to Garron Wells, March 2003.)
   2. B2001-0040/018(22) “Serum lipids in carefully selected ‘atherosclerosis’ and ‘normal’ males” Paper given in Chicago, October 1954. J. A. Little, H.M. Shanoff, R.W. Van der Flier and H.E. Rykert.
2. Ibid., Eighth Annual Report of the Atherosclerosis project 41-52. By Alick Little, Henry M. Schanoff, November 1960, p. 1

This series is divided into four sub-series reflecting the original arrangement of the records.

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