Hypothetical Interventions on Multiple Cardiometabolic Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: A Target...

To evaluate cardiovascular benefits associated with sustained intensive and moderate interventions targeting body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure (SBP), fasting blood glucose (FBG) level, and total cholesterol (TC) concentration.

Using longitudinal data (from June 2006-October 2007 to December 2017) of 94,661 cardiovascular disease (CVD)-free participants aged 30 years and older from the Kailuan cohort, we emulated a target trial to assess the long-term effectiveness of intensive (BMI <25 kg/m², SBP <120 mm Hg, FBG <5.6 mmol/L, TC <5.2 mmol/L) and moderate (BMI <30 kg/m², SBP <140 mm Hg, FBG <7.0 mmol/L, TC <6.2 mmol/L) interventions on 10-year risk of incident CVD. The target trial emulation framework with the parametric g-formula was used to simulate counterfactual outcomes under dynamic interventions, accounting for time-varying confounders and competitive events.

Compared with the natural course CVD risk of 6.48%, intensive interventions yielded a 49% decrease in relative risk (risk ratio, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.49 to 0.54), translating to approximately 3 fewer CVD cases per 100 individuals during 10 years (absolute risk reduction, -3.15%; 95% CI, -3.36% to -2.98%), which extended the restricted mean CVD-free time from 9.32 to 9.51 years. Of all the individual risk factors, SBP control yielded the largest benefits. Notably, even moderate interventions produced a 25% relative reduction in CVD risk, with the average proportion intervened on decreasing from 74.8% to 37.6%. Greater absolute risk reductions were observed in male participants and adults aged 60 years and older.

Long-term interventions addressing cardiometabolic risk factors have considerable public health implications for primary prevention of CVD in China and other Western Pacific countries, where suboptimal cardiometabolic risk profiles remain prevalent.