WEDNESDAY, Aug. 21, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A measure of cardiovascular health (CVH) based on Life’s Essential 8 (LE8), supplemented with a measure of mental health, strongly predicts mortality, according to a study published in the August issue of JACC: Progress.

Vanessa T. Dinh, MPH, of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, and colleagues examined the associations of a CVH construct expanded with a ninth mental health metric based on depression screening using the Patient Health Questionnaires (PHQ-2 and PHQ-9). The analysis included 21,183 adults.

The researchers found that high compared with low CVH scores improved with PHQ-2 and PHQ-9 were associated with a 69 percent and 70 percent lower risk of death, respectively, while high compared with low LE8 score was associated with a 65 percent lower risk. For both LE8 and improved CVH scores, higher scores predicted a lower risk of death in both sexes and in black and white adults, but not in Hispanic adults. Higher scores for both LE8 and improved CVH scores were also associated with lower cardiovascular and cancer mortality. Both improved CVH scores showed excellent performance in predicting mortality (C-statistic 0.843 versus 0.842), which was similar to the LE8 score.

“The inclusion of mental health as a ninth CVH metric, with depression screening as a viable replacement in clinical and community health settings, should be considered,” the authors write.

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