Abstract
To examine associations of unhealthy lifestyle and genetics with risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke. We used data on 76,958 adults from the UK Biobank prospective cohort study. Favourable lifestyle included no overweight/obesity, not smoking, physical activity, not sedentary, healthy diet and adequate sleep. A Polygenic Risk Score (PRS) was derived using 300 CVD-related single nucleotide polymorphisms. Cox proportional hazard ratios (HR) were used to model effects of lifestyle and PRS on risk of CVD and all-cause mortality, stroke and MI. New CVD (n = 364) and all-cause (n = 2408) deaths, and stroke (n = 748) and MI (n = 1140) events were observed during a 7.8 year mean follow-up. An unfavourable lifestyle (0-1 healthy behaviours) was associated with higher risk of all-cause mortality (HR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.73, 2.45), CVD mortality (HR: 2.48; 95% CI: 1.64, 3.76), MI (HR: 2.12; 95% CI: 1.65, 2.72) and stroke (HR:1.74; 95% CI: 1.25, 2.43) compared to a favourable lifestyle (≥4 healthy behaviours). PRS was associated with MI (HR: 1.35; 95% CI: 1.27, 1.43). There was evidence of a lifestyle-genetics interaction for stroke (p = 0.017). Unfavourable lifestyle behaviours predicted higher risk of all-cause mortality, CVD mortality, MI and stroke, independent of genetic risk.