Metabolic and inflammatory burden modifies muscle cardiovascular association across aging cohorts within an intrinsic...

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Public Health

Background:

• Intrinsic capacity is crucial for healthy aging and influences chronic disease risk.
• Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of mortality in aging populations worldwide.
• Understanding factors influencing CVD risk across different demographic groups is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between intrinsic capacity domains and incident cardiovascular disease.
• To examine how systemic inflammation and metabolic burden modify this relationship across US, UK, and Chinese aging cohorts.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of harmonized data from three large, nationally representative aging cohorts: HRS (US), ELSA (UK), and CHARLS (China).
• Utilized multivariable cause-specific Cox models with time-varying covariates to assess associations.
• Employed a novel three-dimensional Metabolism-Inflammation-Muscle surface to visualize complex interactions.

Main Results:

• Muscle function demonstrated a consistent inverse association with cardiovascular risk across all three cohorts.
• Elevated systemic inflammatory markers (e.g., C-reactive protein) and metabolic burden (e.g., diabetes, non-HDL cholesterol) were linked to increased cardiovascular risk.
• Inflammation and metabolic issues attenuated the protective association of muscle function with cardiovascular risk, most notably in the Chinese cohort (CHARLS).

Conclusions:

• Muscle function serves as a robust cross-cohort indicator of reduced cardiovascular risk.
• The magnitude of muscle function's protective effect is context-dependent, being diminished by systemic inflammation and metabolic stress.
• Further validation is needed before clinical application of the proposed interaction model.