JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The American Heart Association recently published new cardiovascular health (CVH) metrics called “Life’s Essential 8” (LE8).

Objective:

We aimed to examine the secular trends in CVH, as assessed by LE8, in the US adults from 2005 to 2018.

Methods:

Using cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2005-06 and 2017-18, we calculated the age-standardized mean scores of overall CVH and each of the LE8 components (i.e., diet, physical activity [PA], nicotine exposure, sleep health, body mass index [BMI], blood lipids, blood glucose, and blood pressure [BP]), where a higher score means a better health status (range of 0-100). A total of 21,667 adults aged 20-79 years were included in this analysis.

Results:

The age-standardized mean score of overall CVH did not significantly change between 2005-06 and 2017-18 (65.5 [95% CI: 63.9-67.1] to 65.0 [62.8-67.1]). The age-standardized mean scores did not significantly change for diet (41.0 [38.0-43.9] to 41.5 [36.5-46.6]), PA (57.5 [53.0-61.9] to 53.0 [48.7-57.3]), and BP (68.4 [65.2-71.5] to 68.6 [65.3-71.9]), improved for nicotine exposure (64.7 [61.1-68.4] to 71.9 [67.7-76.2]), sleep health (83.7 [81.6-85.7] to 84.1 [81.2-87.1]), and blood lipids (61.6 [59.1-64.0] to 67.0 [63.5-70.4]), and worsened for BMI (63.4 [59.7-67.1] to 56.2 [52.5-59.9]) and blood glucose (83.9 [82.4-85.4] to 77.4 [74.5-80.3]).

Conclusions:

Overall CVH score did not change among US adults from 2005 to 2018, as well as three components (diet, PA, and BP). Scores for nicotine exposure, blood lipids, and sleep health increased but scores for BMI and blood glucose decreased over time.