How healthy lifestyle choices can limit the risk of CHD
Complying with the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 (LS7) recommendations is associated with a lower lifetime risk of developing coronary heart disease (CHD), according to a new study published in Circulation.
The LS7 recommendations were designed to focus on cardiovascular health factors that a person can change through lifestyle changes. The recommendations encourage smoking cessation, eating a healthier diet, exercise, weight loss, blood pressure and cholesterol control, and blood sugar reduction. More information is available here.
The study's authors noted that this is the first study of its kind to report the lifetime risk of CHD or the years free of CHD in accordance with polygenic risk and adherence to LS7 recommendations in both white and Black patients.
The team examined data from 8,372 white and 2,314 Black patients older than 45 years of age who were CHD-free at baseline between 1987 and 1989. All data was from the data from the ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities) study. Three follow-up studies were conducted between 2011 and 2013, 2016 and 2017, and 2018 and 2019.
Fifty-six percent of the patients were women, and the median patient age was 54 years old.
Many patients can offset their lifetime risk for CHD by almost half if they manage their health by following LS7 recommendations, the authors found.
The overall remaining lifetime risk of CHD was 27%. This ranged from 16.6% in patients with an ideal LS7 score to 43.1% in patients with a poor LS7 score.
The authors found that the association of polygenic risk score (PRS) with lifetime risk was different based on ancestry. For example, in white participants, the remaining lifetime risk ranged from 19.8% to 39.3%, according to increasing PRS categories.
Black patients, however, had a lifetime risk ranging from 19.1% to 28.6%, according to increasing PRS.
Overall, similar lifetime risk estimates were detected for all patients with poor LS7 scores.
“Our finding that high lifetime risk conferred by high PRS can be offset by a healthy lifestyle echoes the findings of previous studies that used more limited genetic risk scores and did not account for the competing risk of death,” wrote lead author Natalie R. Hasbani, MPH, a specialist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and colleagues.
Read the full study here.