“Only about 2 percent of people in the United States and other countries meet all the ideal requirements for these seven factors,” Gao said. “This raises the question of whether improving these metrics is related to lower future risk of CVD. It should, but no one had the data to support this idea.”
IMAGE: © GETTY IMAGES / REZENDELUAN
Katie Bohn
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Seven key measures of heart health may help predict future risk of cardiovascular disease, according to researchers. They added that improving these measures also may help decrease the risk of CVD in the future.
The team of researchers, including three from Penn State, studied how seven key health measures — such as diet, exercise and blood pressure — were related to people’s cardiovascular health over time.
While these factors were known to be beneficial to heart health, the researchers said less was known about how patterns in these measures over time affected future risk of CVD.
The team identified five patterns of how well people did or did not do on the seven health measures over time. These patterns were able to help predict participants’ future risk of CVD.
例如，在七个指标中持续得分的人比没有的人持续得分。研究人员还发现，随着时间的推移，改善这些指标与未来CVD的风险较低。
Xiang Gao, associate professor ofnutritional sciencesand director of the Nutritional Epidemiology Lab at Penn State, said the study — published today (May 31) in JAMA Network Open — suggests that people can help influence their risk of CVD in the future.
“在我们的学习人口中，可能在世界各地，有很多人的心脏健康差不多或贫穷，”高说。“但是，尽管大多数人不符合所有七个指标的理想标准，但如果我们能够改进这些措施，CVD的未来风险仍可减少。”
The American Heart Association identified the七个健康指标as the most important predictors of heart health. These include four behaviors that people have control over and three biometrics that should be kept at healthy levels.
The modifiable behaviors include not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, eating healthy and staying physically active. The biometrics are blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
每个指标都有一个穷人,intermediate or ideal score. For example, smoking regularly would be considered “poor,” smoking within the past 12 months would be “intermediate,” and never smoking or quitting more than a year ago would be “ideal.” Combining the score for all seven metrics — 0 for poor, 1 for intermediate and 2 for ideal — results in an overall “cardiovascular health score,” or CHS.
“Only about 2 percent of people in the United States and other countries meet all the ideal requirements for these seven factors,” Gao said. “This raises the question of whether improving these metrics is related to lower future risk of CVD. It should, but no one had the data to support this idea.”
The researchers used data from 74,701 Chinese adults from the Kailuan Study. At the beginning of the study, the participants completed questionnaires about their health, and underwent clinical exams and lab tests three times in the first four years. Across the following five years, the researchers kept track of any new onset CVD cases in the participants.
在收集信息后，研究人员分析了数据，以了解前四年的CHS如何与参与者在随后开发CVD。他们发现了五种不同的模式 - 或轨迹 - 整个四年都遵循了。
These trajectories included maintaining high, medium or low CHS, as well as increasing and decreasing CHS over time. Gao said these different trajectories were associated with different risks for developing CVD in the future.
“例如，大约19％的参与者能够在四年内保持更好的心血管健康分数，”高说。“我们发现，这些人在未来比维持低心血管健康评分的人的患者患心脏病的可能性较低了79％。”
GAO表示，当他们分析中风和心肌梗死的风险时，他们发现了类似的结果 - 通常被称为心脏病发作。
“We also examined whether improving cardiovascular health score over time affected future risk of CVD,” Gao said. “We found that improvement of overall cardiovascular health over time related to lower future CVD in this population, even for those with poor cardiovascular health status at the beginning of the study.”
Additionally, the researchers were curious about whether one health measure was more important than the others. They ran repeated tests, removing a different, single health measure each time. They found that the scores still predicted future CVD risk in similar ways.
“This suggests that overall cardiovascular health is still the most important thing and that one factor isn’t more important than the others,” Gao said. “It also helps confirm that these seven metrics are valid and a very useful tool for developing a strategy for cardiovascular disease prevention.”
武源吴，凯源综合医院;汉丹中央医院沙秋;威归李，范德比尔特大学医学中心;Alice H. Lichtenstein，塔夫茨大学;京盛高，凯源综合医院;Penny M. Kris-Etherton，Penn State;玉图吴，凯源综合医院;川园综合医院成金;宾州邦康州;弗兰克B.胡，哈佛 Chan School of Public Health, also participated in this work.
宾州州的Cyber Cyience Seed Grant计划有助于支持这项研究。