Abstract
BACKGROUND: Depression is an increasing illness worldwide that severely diminishes the quality of life. The study sought to elucidate the association of the American Heart Association's Life's Essential 8 (LE8) metrics with the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among depression participants and further quantify the related theoretical reduction of long-term CVD burden.</p>
METHODS: 20,832 participants with depression from UK-Biobank were included. LE8, including diet quality, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep duration, body mass index, lipids, glucose, and blood pressure, was calculated at baseline and categorized into low, medium, and high levels. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) for major cardiovascular events (MACE) was calculated using Cox models. We further quantified population attributable fractions (PAF) for CVD.</p>
RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 12.0 years, 658 MACE were recorded. After multi-variable adjustment, compared with participants with low LE8, people with high LE8 had a decreased risk of MACE (HR, 95%CI: 0.32, 0.22-0.47), non-fatal MACE (0.39, 0.26-0.61), myocardial infarction (0.23, 0.12-0.44), and ischaemic stroke (0.52, 0.27-0.99). Overall, 50.7% (95%CI: 34.5-66.9%) of MACE and 48.0% (95%CI: 29.5-66.4%) of non-fatal MACE were attributable to the low and medium adherence to LE8 at the 5-year follow-up, respectively. Sub-optimal control of blood pressure ranked as the top contributor to all types of CVD in individuals with depression.</p>
CONCLUSIONS: Optimal adherence to LE8 was associated with lower burden of CVD in depression. Adopting a comprehensive lifestyle intervention might help further reduce CVD burden in mental disorders.</p>