ArticleHeart (British Cardiac Society)2025
Age-stratified comparison of heart age and predicted cardiovascular risk in 370 000 primary care patients.
Article in Heart (British Cardiac Society), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Danish evaluation of Your Heart Forecast: a cluster randomised controlled trial aimed at improving modifiable risk factors of CVD.Open heart · 2026Trial
- Cardiovascular Diseases: Exploring Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, Risk Factors, and Medicinal Plant-Based Therapies: A Narrative Review.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Associations of Biological Age and Heart Age Accelerations With New-Onset Stroke in Individuals With Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Syndrome Stages 0-3: Evidence From a Chinese Longitudinal Study.Journal of clinical hypertension (Greenwich, Conn.) · 2026Article
- Potential of earlier primary care health checks for prevention of cardiovascular events in younger age groups: population-based study in the United Kingdom.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Interpretable machine learning for prognostic prediction in critically ill patients with coronary artery disease: a multicenter study.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Association between onset age and mortality gradients in advanced cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Observational
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCardiovascular disease (CVD) preventive medications are recommended for patients at high short-term CVD risk. As most younger people with multiple raised CVD risk factors levels have low short-term risk, they could be falsely reassured to take no action. Heart age-the chronological age of a hypothetical person with the same short-term absolute CVD risk as the patient being assessed, but with an 'ideal' risk profile-is a complementary relative CVD risk metric developed to encourage these younger patients to make long-term lifestyle changes. However, clinicians sometimes use heart age to inform medication decisions. We assessed the appropriateness of this practice by comparing heart age and short-term CVD risk.
methodsNew Zealand primary care patients are recruited to the PREDICT cohort when their CVD risk is assessed. PREDICT is an ongoing prospective study in one-third of New Zealand general practices, designed to derive CVD risk prediction algorithms. Five-year CVD risk was calculated for 35-74-year-old PREDICT participants using published equations. Heart age was calculated using non-smoking, systolic blood pressure of 120 mm Hg and total cholesterol/high-density lipoprotein ratio of 3.5, as the 'ideal' risk profile. CVD risk and heart age gaps (difference between chronological age and heart age) were compared.
resultsAmong 371 676 PREDICT participants, 5-year CVD risk increased with age, approximately doubling every 10 years, whereas heart age gaps decreased with increasing age, approximately halving between 35 and 44-year olds and 65-74-year olds. There were 5-40-year heart age gap differences between groups with similar 5-year CVD risks, but different ages.
conclusionShort-term CVD risk and heart age are not interchangeable risk metrics. Short-term risk increases with increasing age whereas heart age gaps generally decline, with major differences between younger and older people with similar short-term risk. If heart age is used to inform medication decisions rather than encourage long-term lifestyle changes, older people at high short-term risk could be undertreated and younger people at low short-term risk could be unnecessarily medicated.
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