Abstract 12708: Adherence to Healthy Lifestyle and Cardiovascular Diseases in Chinese

Introduction: Adherence to a combination of healthy lifestyle factors has been related to a considerable reduction of cardiovascular risk in white populations; however, little is known whether such associations persist in non-white populations. Methods: We examined the associations of six lifestyle factors with ischemic heart disease and ischemic stroke (IS) in the China Kadoorie Biobank of 461,211 participants aged 30-79 years without cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or diabetes at baseline. Low-risk lifestyle factors were defined as non-smoking or having stopped for reasons other than illness, alcohol consumption of 2 , and waist-to-hip ratio Results: During a median of 7.2 years of follow-up, we documented 3,331 incident major coronary events (MCE) and 19,348 incident IS. In multivariable-adjusted analyses, current non-smoking, light-to-moderate alcohol, high physical activity, diet rich in vegetables and fruits and low in red meat, and low adiposity were independently associated with reduced risks of MCE and IS. Compared with participants without any low-risk factors, the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) for those with ≥5 low-risk factors was 0.37 (0.16, 0.84) for MCE and 0.50 (0.40, 0.64) for IS. Approximately 60.8% (33.4%, 78.8%) of the MCE and 29.3% (17.6%, 40.1%) of the IS were attributable to poor adherence to healthy lifestyle. Conclusions: Our data indicate that adherence to healthy lifestyle may substantially lower the burden of cardiovascular diseases in Chinese.