Evolutie van de bloedlipiden en van de cardiovasculaire risicofactoren bij een bataljon Belgische soldaten gedurende een verlengde uno-zending in het Balkangebied (Belbat 13)

During a military UNO-mission in the Balkanarea from August 1996 to December 1996, the variations in bloodlipids and the nutrition of 211 French-speaking soldiers were recorded. Before the mission 55% of the participants had a LDL-cholesterol higher or equal to 115 mg/dl, while 60% of the participants ended up in this category after the mission. The number of participants with a hypertriglyceridemia (triglyceridemia more than 150 mg/dl) increased from 17% to 32% after the mission. Severe hypertriglyceridemia (more than 200 mg/dl) increased from 10% (n = 21) to 20% (n = 43) after the mission. According to the mean daily intake of alcohol, based upon a fourfold recording of the diet during the mission, two categories were created: a first which consumed more than 20 gram of ethanol (n = 53) and a second which took between 0 and 20 gram of alcohol a day (n = 155). The strongest increase was noted for the triglyceridemia: 94 ± 39 mg/dl for soldiers of the first category and 39 ± 81 mg/dl for those of the second category (P = 0,0001). For the future it appears essential to identify soldiers with high cardiovascular riskfactors before the mission in order to be able to inform them correctly. In order to obtain an exact evaluation of the cardiovascular risk of the participants and to inform them correctly, our investigation missed a number of essential data like smoking behaviour.