Abstract
BACKGROUND: Whether middle-aged individuals with a greater difference between chronological age and vascular age show a lower cardiovascular disease risk remains to be clarified. OBJECTIVES: This study sought to examine whether individuals with supernormal vascular aging (VA) have a lower cardiovascular disease risk than do individuals with normal VA. METHODS: This prospective cohort study included 20,917 middle-aged (40-60 years) participants from the Kailuan Study. VA was defined as the predicted age in a multivariate regression model, including classic cardiovascular risk factors and pulsed wave velocity. The chronological age minus the VA was defined as the Δ-age, and the 10th and 90th percentiles of the Δ-age were used as cutoffs to define early VA and supernormal VA, respectively. The outcome was a composite of myocardial infarction, hospital admission for heart failure, and stroke. The study used Cox proportional hazards regression to examine the association between the VA categories and the incident cardiovascular outcome. RESULTS: During the median 4.6-year follow-up period, 584 endpoint events were observed. After adjusting for potential variables, when compared with the normal VA group, the supernormal VA group had a decreased rate of cardiovascular events (HR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.35-0.64), and the early VA group had an increased rate (HR: 1.90; 95% CI: 1.22-2.95) of cardiovascular events. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals with supernormal VA are at a lower risk of cardiovascular events, and individuals with early VA are at a higher risk of cardiovascular events than individuals with normal VA. Further characterization may provide novel insight into future preventive strategies against cardiovascular disease.