Ideal cardiovascular health metrics and risk of cardiovascular disease or mortality: A meta-analysis

Background: Inconsistent findings have reported regarding ideal cardiovascular health metrics and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality.

Objective: To investigate whether achieving a greater number of ideal cardiovascular health metrics was associated with a lower risk of CVD and mortality in the general population by conducting a meta-analysis of data from available prospective cohort studies.

Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science from their inception to February 2016. Only prospective cohort studies investigating the association between the ideal cardiovascular health metrics and CVD or mortality were eligible. The most-fully adjusted risk ratio (RR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) was pooled to estimate the association.

Results: Nine prospective cohort studies involving 12,878 participants were analyzed. Meta-analyses showed that achieving a greatest ideal cardiovascular health metrics was associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality (RR 0.55; 95% CI 0.37-0.80), cardiovascular mortality (RR 0.25; 95% CI 0.10-0.63), cardiovascular disease (RR 0.20; 95% CI 0.11-0.37),and stroke (RR 0.31; 95% CI 0.25-0.38).

Conclusions: Ideal cardiovascular health metrics are inversely associated with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events, supporting the use of cardiovascular health metrics as a useful tool to predict mortality and cardiovascular disease risk.