Spousal metabolic risk factors and future cardiovascular events: A prospective cohort study

Abstract Background and aims We investigated whether the presence of metabolic risk factors in one spouse is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the other spouse. Methods A total of 4390 married participants (2152 men and 2238 women free of CVD at baseline) aged ≥20 years were included in this study. The association between spousal risk factors and incident CVD was estimated separately for men and women (as index individuals) using Cox regression models, with spousal risk factors as exposures and CVD event in the index individuals as the outcome. Exposures included spousal body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose (all in both continuous and categorical forms) and smoking. Models were adjusted for the three nested sets of covariates. Results During a median follow-up of 16.1 years, 588 (419 men) cases of CVD were recorded. Among men, those whose wives were overweight and obese had significantly increased risk of CVD, compared with men whose spouses had normal weight, after adjusting for men risk factors. Hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were 1.41 (1.07–1.87) and 1.38 (1.03–1.85), respectively. Among women, no significant associations were observed between spousal metabolic risk factors and incidence of CVD, after controlling for their own risk factors. Conclusion Findings from this study show that overweight and obesity in women increase their spouses' risk for CVD beyond the effect of the spouses’ own risk factors.