Yemenites' Exodus

Heart-disease researchers in most Western countries would love to have plunked down in their midst a large number of people who have not been previously exposed to the rich and fatty diets characteristic of most developed nations. Investigators in Israel received just such a bonanza 20 years ago, when 48,000 Jews immigrated from Yemen, where they had been isolated for 2,500 years. They gave Vienna-born Dr. Daniel Brunner of Tel Aviv University what he considered a heaven-sent opportunity to compare the effects of different diets and ways of life on the heart and arteries. In New Orleans last week, Brunner told the American Heart Association that as the Yemenite immigrants catch up with earlier Israel settlers in their standard of living, they also begin to catch up in their risk of heart-artery disease.

Brunner and his colleagues had two major groups of Yemenites for comparison. One group, which Brunner calls the veterans, was drawn from the 16,000 Yemenite Jews who had immigrated into Israel before World War II. Some of their children born in Israel were included in his study--making another subgroup of veterans, since they adhere to most Yemenite Jewish traditions. The newcomers are the second major group. Even the immigrant veterans are heavier, regardless of height, than the newcomers, averaging 154 Ibs. as against 136 Ibs. But with increased plumpness come higher blood cholesterol levels, which are slightly but consistently elevated in the veterans as compared with the newcomers. Obesity and high cholesterol counts, Brunner notes, are not signs of overt heart disease, though they are regarded as its precursors.

In fact, there have been so few cases of actual heart disease among either veteran or newcomer Yemenites that Brunner's group could get no significant statistics from them. The best they could do was to lump all Yemenite Jews together and compare them with the rest of the Israeli population. This comprises about 50% Ashkenazim, Jews from northern and western Europe (and their descendants), who have been reared for generations on a diet as rich as only a Jewish mother can make it. Then the electrocardiograms told the story: among Israeli men in general, aged 40 to 64, no fewer than 10% had abnormal tracings indicative of heart disease, as against only 2% of the Yemenite men.

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