The interheart study does in fact give you a clue to the risk factors you should be concentrating on in primary care - for myocardial infarction
Top is hyperlipidemia as measured by raised ApoB/ApoA1 ratio.
smoking, only a few ciggies a day is enough
psychosocial factors (which is probably a bit difficult to quantify)
Body fat, essentially abdominal obesity which is quantified using waist:hip ratio - not BMI
So I guess you could say the rest are less important for you to concentrate on. Other factors in order of importantce are
hypertension - yes comes in lower than abdominal obesity, but self reported so possibly should be higher.
friut and veg (protective)
exercise (protective)
diabetes (risk, and probably should be higher than the study suggests as lots of diabetics are undiagnosed, but that's just me spouting again )
alcohol which is again protective.
I sympathise with primary care providers and their patients who are waiting for NICE to give guidance
They will get round to it, I guess it takes time to work out how much the guidance will cost.........
Also, as I said, this only looks at myocardial infarction. But to the subject of the thread. If BMI (the initial question which spawned this discussion) is a waste of time for predicting MI, could you assume it's a waste of time for the rest? Well, I reckon so, and there I go spouting again.....
Lancet 2004; 364:937-952 Yusuf et al
Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the INTERHEART study): case-control study