Dose-response associations of the American Heart Association's new "Life's essential 8" metrics with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in a nationally representative sample from the United States.

Background: Our aim was to examine the prospective dose-response associations of American Heart Association's (AHA) LIFE's Essential 8 (LE8) score and number of cardiovascular health (CVH) factors with high score with all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) related mortality.

Methods: We pooled 6 consecutive waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) comprising rounds between 2007 and 2008 and 2017-2018. We calculated hazard ratios (HRs) and conducted restricted cubic splines models to assess the dose-response association of LE8 score and CVH factors with all-cause and CVD mortality.

Results: Analyses included 23,531 adults aged 18 years and over (mean [SD] age, 43.6 [16.7] years; 11,979 [51%] female; 8960 [38.1%] non-Hispanic white individuals) with a median follow-up of 7.3 years (IQR 4.3-10.1), corresponding to 168,033 person-years. The dose-response analyses showed a significant inverse curvilinear trend for the association between LE8 score with all-cause and CVD mortality. The optimal risk reduction for all-cause mortality was found at 100 points of the LE8 Score (HR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.27-0.93) compared to the reference (median LE8 score [62.5 points]). Moreover, the dose-response association between LE8 and CVD mortality also exhibited a significant inverse curvilinear association up to 90 points (HR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.17-0.99). Optimal levels of LE8 score may be able to avert around 40% of the annual all-cause and CVD deaths among the US adult population.

Conclusions: Best-case scenario of CVH may reduce around 40% of the all-cause and CVD annual mortality among adults in the United States.