Personality traits, lifestyle behaviors affect CVD risk in patients with type 2 diabetes
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Key takeaways:
- As participant diligence increased, risk for CVD decreased, researchers found.
- Healthy lifestyles had a protective association against CVD regardless of participant diligence.
The personality traits of patients with type 2 diabetes, particularly diligence, may impact their risk for cardiovascular disease, according to findings published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care.
Results further showed individuals with low diligence were more likely to have unhealthy lifestyle behaviors that impact CVD risk, whereas healthy lifestyle behaviors protected against CVD.
Type 2 diabetes is one of the most prevalent and critical risk factors for CVD, according to the researchers. Previous studies have highlighted the role of personality traits and their impact on health-related behaviors in relation to adverse health outcomes.
“However, despite the high risk of cardiovascular complications in individuals with type 2 diabetes, data about the prognostic implications of personality traits for CVD are scant,” Jun-Bean ParkMD, PhD, associate professor in the department of internal medicine at the Seoul National University College of Medicine and the Cardiovascular Center at Seoul National University Hospital, and colleagues wrote.
Researchers investigated the associations between personality traits — including sociability, warmth, diligence, curiosity and nervousness — and how these correlated with lifestyle factors such as obesity, smoking status and physical activity to impact risk for CVD, including myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, atrial fibrillation and heart failure.
The population-based cohort study included data from 8,794 individuals (mean age, 60.1 years; 62.7% men) with type 2 diabetes who were matched with 8,794 individuals without diabetes from the UK Biobank database.
Researchers categorized the participants into groups with low (0-2) or high (3-5) scores for each personality trait based on self-reported information on mental health, psychological factors and social support.
During a median follow-up of 13.6 years, there were 2,110 CVD incidents (MI: 599; ischemic stroke: 431; atrial fibrillation: 1,202; heart failure: 817).
Univariate analysis showed that diligence was significantly associated with lower risk for the composite CVD outcome (HR = 0.93; 95% CI, 0.89-0.97), a finding that remained significant after adjusting for covariates (HR = 0.91; 95% CI, 0.86-0.96).
Sociability significantly reduced risk for CVD in the adjusted analysis (HR = 0.94; 95% CI, 0.89-0.99), with no other personality traits showing an association.
Further, the researchers found diligence significantly reduced the risk for individual CVD events in multivariable analyses (HR for MI = 0.9; 95% CI, 0.82-1; HR for ischemic stroke = 0.83; 95% CI, 0.74-0.94; HR for atrial fibrillation = 0.92; 95% CI, 0.85-0.98; HR for heart failure = 0.84; 95% CI, 0.76-0.91).
Park and colleagues then evaluated the relationships between personality traits, lifestyle behaviors and risk for CVD. They found that as diligence increased, healthy lifestyles including regular physical activity, healthy body weight and never smoking increased.
Notably, the researchers found that regardless of diligence scores, participants with healthy lifestyles had lower risk for composite CVD compared with the unhealthy lifestyle behavior group.
The researchers noted several limitations to this study, including that they could not evaluate lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption, diet quality and sleep patterns. Also, the results may have limited generalizability to other races and ethnicities, as the researchers noted their population was primarily white and of European descent.
“Our study underscores the importance of assessing personality traits in patients with type 2 diabetes as a risk stratification method and developing effective preventive strategies to help them initiate and maintain healthy lifestyle changes,” Park and colleagues wrote, adding that additional research is needed to further evaluate personality-based approaches to CVD prevention.
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