to achieve CV health as defined by AHA

Long road ahead to achieve CV health as defined by AHA

FEBRUARY 18, 2011 | Lisa Nainggolan

Pittsburgh, PA - The first attempt to apply the concept of "cardiovascular health"—as outlined in theAmerican Heart Association's (AHA's) 2020 Impact Goal issued last year—to a cohort of middle-aged community-dwelling individuals in the US found that everyone has a very long way to go to reach this goal and that blacks in particular will find it most challenging [1].

In their paper in the March 1, 2011 issue of Circulation, Dr Claudia Bambs (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago), who is working for two years at the University of Pittsburgh, PA, and colleagues show that only one of almost 2000 participants they studied met all seven components of the AHA's definition of ideal cardiovascular health. In addition, the indices of ideal health behaviors and ideal health factors were met by only 2.0% and 1.4% of participants, respectively. "Our findings suggest that the attainment of the stated goals for the next decade may be more challenging than originally conceived," they state.

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Less than 10% of cohort met less strict definition of CV health

Bambs et al evaluated the AHA construct of cardiovascular health and its ideal health behaviors index and ideal health factors index among 1933 participants in the community-based Heart Strategies Concentrating on Risk Evaluation (Heart SCORE). The mean age of participants was 59 years, 44% were black, and 66% were female.

The seven components of "ideal cardiovascular health" as defined by the AHA comprise four ideal health behaviors:

• Not currently smoking.
• Body-mass index (BMI) <25 kg/m².
• Physically "very active."
• Consumption of three or more servings per day of fruits and vegetables.

and three ideal health factors:

• Total cholesterol <200 mg/dL untreated.
• Systolic BP <120 mm Hg and diastolic BP <80 mm Hg untreated.
• Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) <100 mg/dL untreated.

Only one of the 1933 participants met all seven of these requirements, and even when the definition was relaxed to five or more of these components instead of seven, less than 10% of the study cohort met the goal./.../