LE8: American Heart Association Introduces New Standards for Cardiovascular Health
The American Heart Association (AHA) has introduced a new set of standards for measuring cardiovascular health (CVH), known as Life’s Essential 8 (LE8). These standards build upon the previous Life’s Simple 7 (LS7) by including sleep health as an additional behavioral metric of CVH.
In a recent study published on the medRxiv preprint server, researchers investigated the relationship between LE8 scores and cardiovascular disease (CVD), subtype CVD events, and all-cause mortality.
The study collected individual-level information from six contemporary United States-based cohort studies, including the Cardiovascular Health Study, Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, Framingham Heart Study, Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study, Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Study, and Framingham Offspring cohort study.
The participants’ LE8 scores, LE8 scores without sleep, and LS7 scores were calculated, and multivariate Cox regression modeling was conducted to determine the relationship between LE8 scores and CVDs, CVD subtype events, and all-cause mortality among individuals of different age groups.
The results of the study revealed that higher LE8 scores were significantly associated with a lower risk of CVD events, even after adjusting for other factors. Specifically, each 10-point increase in LE8 scores correlated with a 43% lower risk for younger individuals, 35% lower risk for middle-aged individuals, and 25% lower risk for older individuals.
Furthermore, the incorporation of sleep as a metric in the LE8 score showed a slightly stronger relationship with cardiovascular risk compared to the LE8 score without sleep.
The study also found that nicotine exposure was highest among older individuals, and younger and middle-aged individuals had higher health factor scores than health behavior scores. On the other hand, older individuals showed higher scores for health behaviors.
The comparison between LS7 and LE8 scoring revealed that there was an agreement of around 65-66% for older and middle-aged individuals, and 63% for young individuals. However, many individuals in the middle statistical quartiles were reclassified either upward or downward.
Based on these findings, the study concludes that LE8 scores can be used to assess overall cardiovascular health and predict future CVD risk. Each 10-point increase in LE8 scores was associated with a considerable reduction in CVD risk across all age groups.
It is important to note that the study was published on the medRxiv preprint server, which publishes preliminary scientific reports that have not yet undergone peer review. Therefore, these findings should not be regarded as conclusive or used to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior.
Further research and validation are required to establish the significance and reliability of LE8 as a measure of cardiovascular health. Nevertheless, the study provides valuable insights into the potential impact of LE8 on CVD risk assessment and prevention strategies.
Source: Preliminary scientific report. Ning, H., Perak, A. M., Siddique, J., et al. (2023). Association of Life’s Essential 8 with Cardiovascular Events and Mortality: The Cardiovascular Disease Lifetime Risk Pooling Project (LRPP). medRxiv. doi:10.1101/2023.08.08.23293855 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.08.23293855v1
