Impact of Life’s Essential Eight and Inflammatory Markers on Long-term Cardiovascular Disease Risk and All-cause Mortality: The Heart SCORE Study

Background: Life's Essential 8 (LE8) are the key health behaviors and factors for improving and maintaining cardiovascular health, as defined by the American Heart Association. However, despite the association of cardiovascular diseases with inflammation, LE8 does not include inflammatory markers as a component. We analyzed the longitudinal association of LE8 components and inflammatory measures with health outcomes among a community-based population. Methods: Baseline LE8 metrics and inflammatory markers (interleukin-6 [IL-6] and high sensitivity C-reactive protein [hsCRP]) were measured among 1,869 participants (age 59±7.5 years, 41.9% Black) in the longitudinal Heart SCORE study. Cox-proportional hazard ratios were used to assess the association of incident atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and all-cause mortality across quartiles of LE8 score, and to assess inflammatory markers as an independent risk factor. Results: Compared to the lowest quartile, all higher quartiles of LE8 Score were significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality and ASCVD over a median of 12 years of follow-up. After adjusting for all other LE8 metrics as well as by age, sex, race and socioeconomic risk, ideal level of blood glucose was the single most significant factor associated with lower risk of ASCVD (HR 0.26 [0.12-0.58], p=0.001). For all-cause mortality, no smoking emerged as the main protective LE8 component (HR 0.29 [0.16-0.53], p<0.001). When added to LE8, interleukin-6 (IL-6) was independently associated with ASCVD (HR 1.54 [1.05-2.25], p=0.03),while lower IL-6 was associated with lower all-cause mortality (HR 0.52 [0.30-0.90] p=0.02). HsCRP was not associated with either outcome. Conclusions: Higher LE8 Score and metrics are associated with lower risk of all-cause and ASCVD mortality as well as non-fatal events in this longitudinal cohort of White and Black adults. Additionally, elevated IL-6 levels were associated with higher risk of ASCVD and all-cause mortality even when accounting for total LE8 score. Future studies should investigate the role of modifying inflammatory burden in addition to LE8 components in prevention of adverse health outcomes.