Dose-response association between cardiovascular health and mortality in cancer survivors

Background: There is little knowledge on the dose-response association between cardiovascular health (CVH) and risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer deaths among cancer survivors.Aims: We aimed to examine the dose-response association of CVH with all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality.Methods: A total of 1701 US adult cancer survivors were followed-up during a median of 7.3 (IQR 4.0-10.2) years from 2007 to 2018 through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). We used the American Heart Association ' s (AHA) Life ' s Essential 8 (LE8) as a proxy for CVH.Results: Restricted cubic spline models indicated a close to inverse linear shape for the dose-response association between LE8 score and all-cause mortality with significant risk reductions within the range between 61.25 (Hazard ratio [HR]: 0.76, 95% CI, 0.59-0.98) and 100 points (HR: 0.28, 95%CI, 0.12-0.62), and a curvilinear shape for the dose-response association between LE8 score and CVD deaths with significant risk reductions within the range between 50.25 (HR: 0.72, 95% CI, 0.52-0.99) and 90.25 points (HR: 0.15, 95%CI, 0.02-0.98). No significant dose-response association was observed between LE8 and cancer deaths.Conclusions: Our study showed a close to inverse relationship between higher LE8 and risk of death from all cause, an inverse curvilinear relationship between higher LE8 and the risk for CVD death, and a non-significant association between higher LE8 and the risk of cancer death among US adult cancer survivors, which may translate to a substantial number of annual averted deaths and thus important public health implications.

Automated summary

This study examined the dose-response association between cardiovascular health (CVH) and all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer mortality among cancer survivors. The findings showed that higher CVH levels were associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality and a curvilinear relationship with CVD deaths. However, no significant association was found between CVH and cancer deaths.