Cardiovascular Health Changes in Young Adults and Risk of Later-Life Cardiovascular Disease.

Importance: Associations of midlife cardiovascular health (CVH), measured once, with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) are well described. Less is known about patterns of young adulthood CVH, including its changes and associations with later-life CVD outcomes.

Objective: To model patterns of change in population-level and individual-level CVH through young adulthood and to assess whether they are associated with incident CVD in later life.

Design, setting, and participants: The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study is a prospective longitudinal cohort study that enrolled Black and White participants at ages 18 to 30 years in 1985 and 1986 with subsequent follow-up examinations during the next 35 years at 4 urban US centers. Participants with at least 3 CVH measurements in young adulthood and subsequent follow-up with assessment of incident CVD events were included. Analyses were conducted from October 26, 2023, to May 15, 2024.

Exposures: CVH was measured using the American Heart Association Life's Essential 8 score. Patterns of CVH change in young adulthood (from examinations at years 0 to 20) were modeled with population-level trajectories and assessed by individual-level CVH status changes.

Main outcomes and measures: Incident CVD (myocardial infarction, heart failure, stroke, coronary revascularization, and CVD death) after year 20.

Results: There were 4241 participants in young adulthood (2354 [55.5%] female, 2042 [48.1%] self-identified as Black and 2199 [51.9%] self-identified as White) with a mean (SD) baseline age of 24.9 (3.6) years. In the trajectory analysis, 4 distinct CVH trajectory patterns were identified. Compared with the persistently high CVH trajectory, the moderate-to-low declining and moderate declining CVH trajectories had substantially higher risk for incident CVD. AHRs for incident CVD events ranged from 2.15 (95% CI, 1.04-4.47) in the persistently moderate pattern to 9.96 (95% CI, 4.75-20.86) in the moderate-to-low declining pattern. In the CVH status change analysis (n = 2857), compared with stable moderate CVH in young adulthood, stable high CVH had a lower risk (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR], 0.25 [95% CI, 0.09-0.69]), and stable low CVH had a higher risk (AHR, 5.91 [95% CI, 2.38-14.66]) for incident CVD. Each 10-point decrease in Life's Essential 8 score between years 0 and 20 was associated with a 53% increase in CVD risk (AHR, 1.53 [95% CI, 1.31-1.78]).

Conclusions and relevance: In this prospective cohort study of young adults, unfavorable patterns of CVH change through young adulthood were associated with marked elevations in risk for incident CVD. These data suggest that achieving and maintaining high CVH throughout young adulthood through strategies of primordial prevention are important for prevention of later-life CVD.