Assessing Cardiovascular Health Using Life's Simple 7 in a Chinese Population Undergoing Stroke Prevention

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association proposed a metric called Life's Simple 7 (LS7) to define cardiovascular health (CVH). The presence of a large number of ideal components of CVH is associated with lower cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. We aimed to assess CVH using LS7 in a Chinese population undergoing primary and secondary stroke prevention.

Patients with either ischemic stroke or cardiovascular risk factors were enrolled in the study from October 2010 to July 2013. LS7 components were scored as poor (0 points), intermediate (1 point), or ideal (2 points). The overall LS7 score was categorized as inadequate (0-4), average (5-9), or optimal (10-14) CVH. The Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U-test, and Kruskal-Wallis test were used.

In total, 706 patients were enrolled. (1) The distribution of the overall LS7 score (n = 255) indicated that 9.4%, 82.4%, and 8.2% of the patients had inadequate, average, and optimal CVH, respectively. The proportion of patients with optimal CVH undergoing secondary stroke prevention was lower than that for patients undergoing primary stroke prevention (3.8% vs. 12.8%, P = 0.005). The vast majority of participants (76.1%) presented with ≤2 ideal health components. (2) The proportions of patients with poor, intermediate, and ideal status, respectively, for the following LS7 components were assessed : t0 otal cholesterol (n = 275; 5.1%, 73.8%, and 21.1%), blood pressure (n = 351; 32.5%, 59.0%, and 8.5%), blood glucose (n = 280; 9.3%, 39.6%, and 51.1%), physical activity (n = 540; 90.7%, 8.7%, and 0.6%), diet (n = 524; 0.2%, 92.4%, and 7.4%), smoking (n = 619; 20.7%, 2.9%, and 76.4%), and body mass index (n = 259; 6.6%, 35.5%, and 57.9%).

Few Chinese patients undergoing stroke prevention had optimal CVH (determined using LS7). Additionally, fewer patients undergoing secondary prevention had optimal CVH than those undergoing primary prevention. In particular, physical activity and diet status in this population require improvement.