Longitudinal cardiovascular health measured by life's essential 8 metrics with incident diabetes: A 13‐year prospective cohort study

Abstract Aims To investigate the associations of baseline and longitudinal cardiovascular health (CVH) measured by ‘Life's Essential 8’ (LE8) metrics with the risk of diabetes in Chinese people with normoglycaemia or prediabetes. Materials and Methods A total 86,149 participants without diabetes were enroled from the Kailuan study and were stratified by baseline glycaemic status (normoglycaemia or prediabetes). Cardiovascular health score ranged from 0 to 100 points was categorised into low (0–49), middle (50–79), and high (80–100) CVH status. Cox regressions were used to assess the associations of baseline and time‐updated CVH status with incident diabetes in the overall cohort and across baseline glycaemic statuses. Results During a median follow‐up of 12.94 (interquartile rage: 12.48–13.16) years, we identified 13,097 (15.20%) cases of incident diabetes. Baseline and time‐updated high CVH status was associated with a lower risk of diabetes, the corresponding hazard ratio (HR) versus low CVH status was 0.27 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.23–0.31) and 0.26 (95% CI, 0.23–0.30) in the overall cohort, respectively. Additionally, the effect of high CVH on diabetes was more prominent in participants with normoglycaemia than those with prediabetes ( P < 0.0001), with an HR of 0.26 (95% CI, 0.22–0.31) versus 0.50 (95% CI, 0.41–0.62) for baseline CVH, and 0.25 (95% CI, 0.21–0.30) versus 0.39 (95% CI, 0.32–0.48) for time‐updated CVH. Conclusions Elevated baseline and longitudinal CVH score assessed by LE8 metrics is associated with a lower risk of subsequent diabetes, especially in normoglycaemic adults.