Ideal cardiovascular health and risk of death in a large Swedish cohort

• Published in: BMC public health 2024-02, Vol.24 (1), p.358-358, Article 358
• Main Authors: Ding, Lijie, Ponzano, Marta, Grotta, Alessandra, Adami, Hans-Olov, Xue, Fuzhong, Lagerros, Ylva Trolle, Bellocco, Rino, Ye, Weimin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Alcohol; Blood pressure; Body mass; Body mass index; Body size; Cancer; Cardiovascular diseases; Chronic illnesses; Cohort studies; Death; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus; Diet; Disease prevention; Dyslipidemia; Education; Emigration; Exercise; Health promotion; Hypertension; Ideal cardiovascular health; Lipids; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Mortality; Nutrition research; Patient outcomes; Physical activity; Prevention; Questionnaires; Regression analysis; Regression models; Risk assessment; Risk factors; Self report; Sensitivity analysis; Sex differences; Statistical analysis; Sweden; Variables
• ISSN: 1471-2458; 1471-2458
• DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-17885-4

Ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) can be assessed by 7 metrics: smoking, body mass index, physical activity, diet, hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes, proposed by the American Heart Association. We examined the association of ideal CVH metrics with risk of all-cause, CVD and non-CVD death in a large cohort. A total of 29,557 participants in the Swedish National March Cohort were included in this study. We ascertained 3,799 deaths during a median follow-up of 19 years. Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of the association between CVH metrics with risk of death. Laplace regression was used to estimate 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles of age at death. Compared with those having 6-7 ideal CVH metrics, participants with 0-2 ideal metrics had 107% (95% CI = 46-192%) excess risk of all-cause, 224% (95% CI = 72-509%) excess risk of CVD and 108% (31-231%) excess risk of non-CVD death. The median age at death among those with 6-7 vs. 0-2 ideal metrics was extended by 4.2 years for all-causes, 5.8 years for CVD and 2.9 years for non-CVD, respectively. The observed associations were stronger among females than males. The strong inverse association between number of ideal CVH metrics and risk of death supports the application of the proposed seven metrics for individual risk assessment and general health promotion.