Point Identified Around Age 10 When Cardiovascular Health Trajectories Begin to Drop

MONDAY, Dec. 23, 2024 (HealthDay News) — There is a key time point between midchildhood and adolescence when cardiovascular health (CVH) trajectories begin to decline, according to a study published online Dec. 18 in JAMA Cardiology.

Izzuddin M. Aris, Ph.D., from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in Boston, and colleagues characterized CVH trajectories across childhood and adolescence and assessed associations with sociodemographic variables using data from the ongoing prospective prebirth cohort study, Project Viva prebirth cohort. A total of 1,523 live births from 2,218 in the original cohort were included in the analysis.

The researchers found that the mean CVH score was 82.6, 84.1, 82.0, and 73.8 in early childhood, midchildhood, early adolescence, and late adolescence, respectively. The estimated mean age of inflection when the CVH score declined was 10.1 and 10.0 years for male and female children, respectively; the decline in CVH was associated with health behaviors and not health factors. Male versus female children had faster CVH score gain and faster CVH score decline before and after the inflection, respectively (β = 0.79 and −0.33 points/year). Compared with non-Hispanic White children, non-Hispanic Black children and children of other non-Hispanic races had later timing of inflection (β = 0.32 and 0.16 years, respectively).

“Our findings add to the growing body of evidence and provides insight into the natural history and trajectory of CVH in early life,” the authors write.

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