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Introduction: Although elevated left ventricular mass (LVM) is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) events over short-term follow-up, limited data exists regarding echocardiographic assessments in relation to long-term health outcomes. Hypothesis: We assessed the associations of LVM to the risk of incident all-cause mortality, CVD, dementia, hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease (CKD) over 20 years of follow-up. Methods: We evaluated up to 3 serial echocardiographic observations (1991-2008) for up to 8218 Framingham Heart Study participants. We modeled LVM as indexed to height 2.7 , logarithmically transformed then standardized. Utilizing multivariable-adjusted time-dependent and interval-censored Cox proportional hazards models, we related log-LVMI to the incidence of CVD and other health outcomes through the end of 2019 by updating LVM and all covariates at multiple examinations. Results: Over a median follow-up of 17 years (max 29 years), our study participants (mean age 47 years, 54% women) experienced 1353 events for all-cause mortality, 948 for CVD, 293 for dementia, 1631 for hypertension, 492 for diabetes, and 627 for CKD. Higher log-LVMI was significantly associated with increased incident all-cause mortality and CVD, including its respective components: coronary heart disease, heart failure (with reduced and preserved ejection fraction), and stroke. Results were consistent for incident hard and atherosclerotic CVD. Higher LVMI was also significantly associated with increased incidence of dementia, hypertension, diabetes, and CKD (defined as eGFR<60 mL/min/1.73 m 2 and defined with urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio ≥30). Conclusions: In our large prospective community-based sample higher LVMI carries an adverse prognosis for multiple health outcomes over two decades of follow-up. These findings underscore the importance of maintaining an optimal LVM over the life course with control of its key determinants such as blood pressure and glycemia.
Pan et al. (2024) studied this question.