Life's Essential 8 Trajectories and Risk of Stroke: A Prospective Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND

Evidence is lacking regarding long-term patterns of change in Life's Essential 8 (LE8) and their association with the risk of stroke. We aim to evaluate LE8 trajectories and examine their association with the risk of stroke in China.

METHODS

This study, conducted in a workplace setting, recruited 26 719 participants (average age, 46.02±11.27 years and a male population of 73.73%) who had no history of stroke and consecutively participated in 6 surveys from 2006 to 2016. Repeated LE8 measurements were determined by taking the unweighted average of the 8 component scores ranging from 0 to 100. People with higher scores had better overall cardiovascular health. By examining the medical records of the participants, stroke cases were identified for the period from 2016 to 2020. A latent mixture model was applied to classify the trajectory clusters of LE8 from 2006 to 2016, and Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

Five LE8 trajectories were detected between 2006 and 2016. Four hundred ninety-eight incident strokes including 55 (11.04%) hemorrhagic and 458 (91.97%) ischemic strokes were documented. After adjusting for covariates, the hazard ratios and 95% CIs for the association between stable-low, moderate-increasing, moderate-stable, and high-stable trajectories and incident stroke, compared with the moderate-decreasing trajectory, were 1.42 (1.11-1.84), 0.73 (0.56-0.96), 0.49 (0.39-0.62), and 0.19 (0.11-0.32), respectively. Individuals with high LE8 status (LE8≥80) exhibited a significantly reduced risk of stroke compared with those with low one (LE8≤49; -trend <0.001). A faster annual growth in LE8 was related to a lower risk of stroke.

CONCLUSIONS

Maintaining high LE8 over an extended period and high baseline LE8 status were related to a decreased risk of stroke. Despite the initial low level of LE8, improvement in LE8 attenuates or even reverses the risk of stroke.