Cardiovascular health, measured using Life's Essential 8, is associated with reduced dementia risk among older men and women

Abstract Background Dementia poses considerable challenges to healthy aging. Prevention and management of dementia are essential given the lack of effective treatments for this condition. Methods A secondary data analysis was conducted using data from 928 InCHIANTI study participants (55% female) aged 65 years and older without dementia at baseline. Cardiovascular health (CVH) was assessed by the “Life's Essential 8” (LE8) metric that included health behaviors (diet, physical activity, smoking status, sleep duration) and health factors (body mass index, blood lipid, blood glucose, blood pressure). This new LE8 metric scores from 0 to 100, with categorization including “low LE8” (0–49), indicating low CVH, “moderate LE8 (50‐79)”, indicating moderate CVH, and “high LE8 (80‐100)”, indicating high CVH. Dementia was ascertained by a combination of neuropsychological testing and clinical assessment at each follow‐up visit. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine associations between CVH at baseline and risk of incident dementia after a median follow‐up of 14 years. Results Better CVH (moderate/high LE8 vs. low LE8) was inversely associated with the risk of incident dementia (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.61, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.46–0.83, p = 0.001). Compared with health factors, higher scores of the health behaviors (per 1 standard deviation [SD]), specifically weekly moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity time (per 1 SD), were significantly associated with a lower risk of incident dementia (health behaviors: HR:0.84, CI:0.73–0.96, p = 0.01; physical activity: HR: 0.62, CI: 0.53–0.72, p < 0.001). Conclusion While longitudinal studies with repeated measures of CVH are needed to confirm these findings, improving CVH, measured by the LE8 metric, may be a promising dementia prevention strategy.