Abstract
Background: The burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) prompted the American Heart Association to develop a cardiovascular health (CVH) metric as a measure to assess the cardiovascular status of the population. We aimed to assess the association between CVH scores and the risk of CVD mortality
among a middle-aged Finnish population.
Methods: We employed the prospective population-based Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease cohort study comprising of middle-aged men (42 to 60 years). CVH scores were computed among 2,607 participants at baseline and categorized as optimum (0-4), average (5-9), or inadequate (10-14) CVH. Multivariate cox
regression models were used to estimate the hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of CVH score for cardiovascular mortality.
Results: During a median follow-up period of 25.8 years, 609 CVD mortality cases were recorded. The risk of CVD mortality increased gradually with increasing CVH score across the range 3-14 (p-value for non-linearity=0.77). Men with optimum CVH score had HR (95% CI) for CVD mortality of 0.30 (CI 0.21 – 0.42, p<0.0001) compared to those with inadequate CVH score after adjustment for conventional cardiovascular risk factors.
Conclusions: CVH score was strongly and continuously associated with the risk of CVD mortality among middle-aged Finnish population and this was independent of other conventional risk factors.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 306-313 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Annals of Medicine |
Volume | 51 |
Issue number | 5-6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Jul 2019 |
Keywords
- Cardiovascular disease
- health metrics
- health score
- risk factor
- cardiovascular mortality