Resting heart rate and risk of left and right heart failure in 0.5 million Chinese adults.

OBJECTIVES

To compare the shape and strength of the associations of resting heart rate (RHR) with incident heart failure (HF) and pulmonary heart disease (PHD) in Chinese adults.

METHODS

The prospective China Kadoorie Biobank recruited >0.5 million adults from 10 geographically diverse regions (5 urban, 5 rural) of China during 2004-2008. After an 11-year follow-up, 6082 incident cases of HF and 5572 cases of PHD, were recorded among 491 785 participants with no prior history of heart disease or use of beta-blockers at baseline. Cox regression yielded HRs for each disease associated with usual RHR after adjustment for confounding factors.

RESULTS

The mean (SD) baseline RHR was 79 (12) (men 78 (12); women 80 (11)) bpm, and these decreased with increasing age (by about 1 bpm per 10 years). Usual RHR showed J-shaped associations with HF and log-linear associations PHD. For HF, each 10 bpm higher usual RHR was associated with an adjusted HR of 1.25 (95% CI 1.17 to 1.34) for RHR>75 bpm. For PHD, each 10 bpm higher RHR was associated with HR of 1.74 (1.67-1.81) across the full range of usual RHR. For HF at RHR75 bpm but not PHD, the HRs per 10 bpm higher RHR were approximately halved by further adjustment for diabetes and hypertension.

CONCLUSIONS

RHR was strongly positively associated with PHD throughout the range studied, but was only associated with HF at RHR>75 bpm, and the strength of the associations with HF were only one-third of those with PHD.