Association of change in cardiovascular health based on life's essential 8 with incident cardiovascular disease

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Public Health
• Preventive Medicine

Background:

• Cardiovascular health (CVH) is a critical determinant of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.
• Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) provides a comprehensive measure of CVH.
• Understanding how changes in CVH impact CVD incidence is vital for public health strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between changes in cardiovascular health (CVH), assessed by Life’s Essential 8 (LE8), and the risk of developing incident cardiovascular disease (CVD).
• To quantify the extent to which different patterns of CVH change influence CVD risk.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 7,194 UK Biobank participants.
• Assessed CVH using a modified LE8 scoring system, categorizing participants into high, moderate, and low CVH groups.
• Analyzed changes in LE8 scores between two time points (2006/2010 and 2012/2013) and their association with incident CVD over a median follow-up of 10.3 years.

Main Results:

• A total of 597 CVD cases were documented during follow-up.
• Compared to maintaining moderate CVH, a decline from moderate to low CVH was associated with a 128% increased CVD risk (HR: 2.28, 95% CI: 1.61–3.23).
• Consistently low CVH also showed a significantly elevated CVD risk (HR: 2.19, 95% CI: 1.46–3.29), while other change patterns did not yield statistically significant results. No significant exposure-response relationship was found between the absolute change in LE8 score and CVD incidence.

Conclusions:

• Changes in cardiovascular health, as measured by LE8, are linked to cardiovascular disease risk.
• The specific pattern of CVH change significantly modifies this association, highlighting the importance of maintaining or improving CVH over time.