British researchers have concluded that counseling and education aimed at preventing coronary heart disease have no impact on mortality and little effect in terms of clinical events, reports “heartwire.” Dr Shah Ebrahim (London School of Tropical Medicine, UK) and colleagues report their findings in the Oct. 18, 2006 Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
Dr. Ebrahim’s team first conducted a review of studies in this field up to 1995 and for this update they further searched to 2001. However no other health-promotion trials with clinical end-point outcomes have been conducted recently. The latest review represents trials done in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s," Dr. Ebrahim said.
Ten intervention trials with clinical end points that used counseling or education to modify more than one cardiovascular risk factor in adults from general populations, occupational groups, or high-risk groups were included.