Child's aggression may foretell heart risk.

Biomedicine 

Child's aggression may foretell heart risk

Some children who show signs of Type A behavior are likely to continue in that hard-driving vein as adults, according to new research. The finding suggests that the Type A pattern of aggression and competitiveness shows up early in life and can persist, perhaps putting the individual at risk of heart disease as an adult.

Saundra MacD. Hunter, Carolyn C. Johnson and their colleagues at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans studied 1,744 children and young adults aged 8 to 24, giving them a test measuring Type A behavior during the 1981-82 school year and again three years later. Typical questions asked participants to rate their tendency to fight or get angry. The research team is taking part in the Bogalusa Heart Study, a large-scale attempt to identify childhood markers of future heart disease (SN: 10/8/88, p.234).

Of the 145 children who had the highest Type A scores on the 1981-82 test, 43 percent remained in that group three years later, the researchers report. In addition, of the 148 easygoing children with the lowest Type A scores on the first test, 45 percent remained in that group three years later.

The team also took into account hostility, an emotion that Redford B. Williams Jr. at Duke University in Durham, N.C., pegs as Type A behavior's "toxic core" that boosts cardiovascular risk (SN: 1/28/89, p.60). Of the 128 children with the highest hostility scores on the initial test, 40 percent remained in that group three years later, the researchers report.

Johnson says her group plans to track the children in the study to see if they leave their schoolyard fights behind. If further research confirms a link between childhood Type A behavior and cardiovascular risk, scientists could begin identifying at-risk children who might benefit by taking a more laid-back approach to life, she adds.