CARDIOVASCULAR disease risk increased significantly among adults aged 75 years and older who reported unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, according to a large nationwide cohort study of individuals without previous cardiovascular events.<\/p>\n
Researchers found a clear association between the accumulation of unhealthy behaviours and the risk of cardiovascular disease<\/a>, stroke, and myocardial infarction<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cardiovascular Disease Risk Increased with Lifestyle Score<\/p>\n The study analysed data from 869,781 adults aged 75 years and older.<\/p>\n Participants were followed for a mean of 6.7 years, during which 120,353 cardiovascular disease events occurred, including 55,117 myocardial infarctions and 74,001 strokes.<\/p>\n An \u2018unhealthy lifestyle behaviour\u2019 score assigned one point each for to participants who were currently smoking, heavy drinking, and not regularly exercising.<\/p>\n Researchers observed that cardiovascular disease incidence increased progressively with higher scores.<\/p>\n Rates per 1,000 person years were 17.09 for a score of zero, 20.64 for a score of one, 28.80 for a score of two, and 30.64 for a score of three.<\/p>\n Individual Behaviours Contributed to Risk<\/p>\n Analysis of individual lifestyle factors showed that current smoking was consistently associated with increased cardiovascular disease, stroke, and myocardial infarction risk.<\/p>\n Non-regular exercise was also associated with elevated risk across all cardiovascular outcomes.<\/p>\n Whereas, heavy drinking was linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, but not myocardial infarction.<\/p>\n Researchers further observed that combinations of unhealthy behaviours produced a compounded increase in cardiovascular risk, with risk rising as the number of unhealthy behaviours accumulated.<\/p>\n Implications For Prevention in Older Adults<\/p>\n The association between unhealthy lifestyle behaviours and cardiovascular disease risk remained significant despite adjustment for demographic and cardiometabolic factors.<\/p>\n Similar patterns were observed for stroke and myocardial infarction, with stroke risk showing the strongest increase at the highest lifestyle risk scores.<\/p>\n Sub-group analyses indicated stronger associations among female participants, and among individuals without diabetes or dyslipidaemia.<\/p>\n The researchers concluded that lifestyle modification remains clinically relevant in later life and that primary prevention efforts should continue well beyond middle age.<\/p>\n They highlighted smoking cessation and promotion of physical activity as key areas for intervention in adults aged 75 years and older without prior cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n Reference<\/p>\n Choi S et al. Unhealthy lifestyle and cardiovascular disease risk in older adults aged 75+\u2009without prior cardiovascular events: a nationwide cohort study. Sci Rep. 2026;DOI:10.1038\/s41598-026-63153-3<\/p>\n Featured image: Michael Derrer Fuchs on Adobe Stock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARDIOVASCULAR disease risk increased significantly among adults aged 75 years and older who reported unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":["post-574011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}