Jcvrisk: An R Package for Population-level Estimation of Cardiovascular Risk Scores in Japanese Adults

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Biostatistics
• Epidemiology

Background:

• Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of mortality in Japan.
• Existing CVD risk scores lack population-level estimation tools for Japanese individuals.
• The Jcvrisk R package was developed to address this gap by integrating major Japanese CVD risk models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Jcvrisk R package for estimating cardiovascular disease risk scores in the Japanese population.
• To apply the Jcvrisk package to a longitudinal study to assess trends in CVD risk.

Main Methods:

• Utilized longitudinal data from the Yakumo Study (2000-2020).
• Integrated four major Japanese CVD risk models (EPOCH, Hisayama, Suita, JALS) into the Jcvrisk package.
• Analyzed temporal trends in CVD risk scores by summarizing data every five years.

Main Results:

• The study population comprised individuals around 60 years old.
• Key risk factors like smoking prevalence and HDL-C showed minor changes over 20 years.
• All calculated CVD risk scores demonstrated a consistent upward trend in 10-year CVD risk.

Conclusions:

• The Jcvrisk R package provides essential functions for calculating CVD risk scores for Japanese adults.
• This tool is valuable for researchers and policymakers monitoring cardiovascular risk at individual and population levels in Japan.