Methods
obesity, PD, ischemic heart disease, arrhythmia
OBESITY, ARRHYTHMIA, ISCHEMIC HEART DISEASE, CEREBROVASCULAR DISEASE
The cross-sectional data were collected from a decoded database without any personal identification information based on a stratified randomized cluster sampling examination of people ≥ 65 years in Tainan City, which was divided into 7 strata by the administrative districts, for the period from 2000 to 2001. In each stratum, one area was randomly selected by adopting a probability proportional to the size of the areas within that specific stratum. All the subjects aged ≥ 65 years were invited to participate the study. A total of 1361 subjects were included after excluding subjects with heavy drinking (males ≥ 210gm /week and females ≥ 140gm /week, None the subjects consumed alcohol, coffee, tea, or cigarettes on the day of the examination and underwent history taking and questionnaire, physical examination, PD, PH and blood tests on the same day. Then, the blood analysis result could be collected from medical record. The clinical examination was performed by physicians. The structural questionnaire included age, gender, medical history, medication, lifestyle habits (cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and regular exercise), ADLs, and IADLs. A history of cerebrovascular disease, arrhythmia, and ischemic heart disease was reviewed by a doctor. ADL and IADL were evaluated by questionnaire, referring the section of daily activities from Chinese-version Multidimensional Functional Assessment Questionnaire (CMFAQ), Cronbach's α was above 0.70 in each domain of that questionnaire. [The body mass index (BMI) was calculated as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. According to the Asian-Pacific cutoff points, obesity was defined as BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 [