‘Ideal’ CV health extremely low among the middle-aged

Bambs C. Circulation. 2011;doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.110.980151.

Less than 10% of a new study’s participants met at least five of the seven “ideal” cardiovascular health components stated in the American Heart Association’s 2020 Impact Goal.

The 2020 Impact Goal was designed to improve the CV health of all Americans by 20% and reduce CV disease and stroke mortality by 20%. The AHA’s definition of ideal CV health encompasses four health behaviors, which are smoking status, BMI, physical activity, and fruit and vegetable consumption, and three health factors, including total cholesterol, blood pressure and fasting plasma glucose.

The researchers used the criteria to evaluate 1,933 participants (mean age, 59 years; 56% white; 66% women) of the community-based Heart Strategies Concentrating on Risk Evaluation (Heart SCORE) study.

Overall, only one participant met all seven components of the AHA definition, whereas less than 10% met at least five. Further, only 2% had all four components of the ideal health behaviors index and 1.4% had all three of the health factors’ index. After adjustment for age, sex and income level, blacks had significantly lower odds of having at least five ideal CV health components than whites (OR=0.18; 95% CI, 0.10-0.34).

Additionally, men had significantly worse status regarding smoking, BP, BMI and fasting plasma glucose, whereas women had poorer total cholesterol and physical activity status.

“Because of the comprehensive nature of the new AHA construct of CV health, we anticipated a low prevalence of ideal categories,” the researchers wrote. “However, the fact that only one out of 1,933 participants met the definition of ideal CV health and that the indices of ideal health behaviors and factors were only met by 2% and 1.4% of the participants, respectively, is especially concerning because of the participatory nature of our project, the use of a community-based recruitment strategy and the inherent healthy volunteer bias that we expected to be associated with more favorable findings.”

This large gap separating the prevalence of ideal CV health from AHA’s goals, the researchers said, suggests that the attainment of the stated goals for the next decade may be much more challenging than originally conceived.

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