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According to the researchers, seven key measures of heart health could help predict the future risk of cardiovascular disease. They added that improving these measures could also help reduce the risk of CVD in the future.
The team of researchers, including three from Penn State, studied the link between cardiovascular health and cardiovascular health in seven key measures (diet, exercise, and blood pressure, for example).
They identified five positive or negative performance patterns of the seven health measures over time. These patterns predicted the future CVD risk of the participants.
For example, people who consistently scored well in all seven measures were less likely to develop cardiovascular disease than others. The researchers also found that improving these parameters over time was linked to a lower risk of CVD in the future.
Xiang Gao, an badociate professor in nutrition science and director of the Penn State's laboratory of epidemiology of nutrition, announced the study published May 31 in the JAMA Network open now – suggests that people can help influence their CVD risk in the future.
In our study population and probably worldwide, many people have suboptimal or bad heart health. However, even though most people do not meet the ideal criteria for the seven indicators, if we can work to improve these measures, the future risk of CVD can further decrease. "
Xiang Gao, Associate Professor of Nutrition Science and Director of Penn State's Nutrition Epidemiology Laboratory
The American Heart Association has identified the seven health parameters as being the most important predictors of heart health. They include four user-controlled behaviors and three biometric settings that must be maintained at healthy levels.
Modifiable behaviors include not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, eating well and staying physically active. The biometric data are blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
Each metric has a low, intermediate or ideal score. For example, smoking regularly would be considered "mediocre", smoking in the last 12 months would be "intermediate" and never smoking or quitting more than a year ago would be "ideal". Combining the score for the seven parameters – 0 for low, 1 for intermediate, and 2 for ideal – gives a global "cardiovascular health score," or CHS.
In the United States and other countries, only about 2% of the population meets all the ideal requirements for these seven factors. This raises the question of whether the improvement of these parameters is related to a lower future risk of CVD. This should be the case, but no one had the data to support this idea. "
Xiang Gao
The researchers used data from 74,701 Chinese adults from the Kailuan study. At the beginning of the study, participants completed health questionnaires and had three clinical and laboratory tests in the first four years. Over the next five years, researchers tracked all new CVD cases among participants.
Once the information was collected, the researchers badyzed the data to see how CHS for the first four years was badociated with whether or not participants developed cardiovascular disease afterwards. They found five distinct patterns – or trajectories – that people followed during the four years.
These trajectories included the maintenance of a high, medium or low CHS, as well as the increase and decrease of CHS over time. Gao said that these different trajectories were badociated with different risks for the development of CVM in the future.
"For example, about 19% of participants were able to maintain a better cardiovascular health score over the four years," said Gao. "We found that these people were 79% less likely to develop heart disease than people with a low cardiovascular health score."
Gao said that they had found similar results when they badyzed the risk of stroke and myocardial infarction – commonly known as heart attack.
"We also examined whether improving the cardiovascular health score over time affected the future risk of CVD," Gao said. "We found that improving overall cardiovascular health over time was linked to the future reduction of CVD in this population, even for people with poor cardiovascular health at the beginning of the study. . "
In addition, researchers wondered if one measure of health was more important than the others. They performed repeated tests, each time removing a different and unique health measure. They found that the scores always predicted the future risk of CVD in a similar way.
"This suggests that overall cardiovascular health is still the most important thing and that one factor is not more important than the others," Gao said. "This also confirms that these seven parameters are valid and are a very useful tool for developing a cardiovascular disease prevention strategy."
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