Ideal cardiovascular health in Chinese urban population

The American Heart Association's 2020 Strategic Goals define a new concept of cardiovascular health. However, the prevalence of ideal cardiovascular health outside of the United States is unclear, and its relationship with psychological status has not been reported.

We included 9962 participants (mean age 47.1 years; 44.2% women) from the survey of the Disease Risk Evaluation and Health Management study from October 2009 to Feb 2012. The prevalence of poor, intermediate, and ideal cardiovascular health levels were calculated, and psychological status was assessed using the 21-item Depression Anxiety Stress Scales.

After adjusting for sex and age, only 0.5% of the participants met ideal levels of all 7 cardiovascular health metrics, and 26.9% presented with 5 to 7 ideal health metrics. Fasting plasma glucose was the most prevalent ideal metric (71.2%), whereas physical activity was the least prevalent (18.1%). Women had a significantly higher proportion of 5 to 7 ideal health metrics compared with men (40.4% versus 13.4% after adjusting for age), and the proportion of participants who had 5 to 7 ideal health metrics significantly decreased with age (P<0.001 for trend). Furthermore, the scores for depression, anxiety, and stress showed a negative correlation with the number of ideal health metrics, with regression coefficients of -0.07, -0.07, and -0.11, respectively (P<0.05).

Few adults met ideal levels of cardiovascular health. Individuals, communities, and health-care providers in China should be better integrated to pay closer attention to primordial prevention of unhealthy lifestyles and psychological problems.