Discordance was greater for middle-aged adults, racial and ethnic minorities, and for those with lower educational attainment
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Aug. 8, 2025 (HealthDay News) — The Predicting Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Events (PREVENT) equation risk age is older than chronological age on average, with greater discordance for those with adverse sociodemographic factors, according to a research letter published online July 30 in JAMA Cardiology.
Vaishnavi Krishnan, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues developed sex-specific risk age equations using the PREVENT base model for 10-year risk for total cardiovascular disease (CVD). PREVENT risk age was calculated among nonpregnant adults aged 30 to 79 years without CVD from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 2011 to March 2020, and the proportions with age discordance more than 5 years and more than 10 years in the overall sample were estimated.
The eligible sample included 14,140 participants, representing about 138 million U.S. adults. The researchers found that the mean PREVENT risk age and chronological age were 55.4 and 51.3 years, respectively, in women and 56.7 and 49.7 years in men. There was variation in discordance by sociodemographic factors, with middle-aged adults, racial and ethnic minoritized groups, those with a worse income-to-poverty ratio, or lower educational attainment having greater discordance. A PREVENT risk age more than 10 years older than chronological age was seen for 22.8 percent of women and 32.5 percent of men with a high school education or less.
“Many people who should be on medicine to lower their risk for heart attack, stroke or heart failure are not on these medications. We hope this new heart age calculator will help support discussions about prevention and ultimately improve health for all people,” senior author Sadiya S. Khan, M.D., also from the Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a statement.
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