Estimated cardiorespiratory fitness and incident risk of cardiovascular disease in China

BACKGROUND: Limited evidence is available on the association between estimated cardiorespiratory fitness (e-CRF) and incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Chinese population. METHODS: A total of 10,507 adults including 5084 men (48.4%) and 5423 (51.6%) women with a median age of 56.0 (25% quantile: 49, 75% quantile 63) years from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) was recruited in 2011 as baseline. The CVD incident events were followed-up until 2018. e-CRF was calculated from sex-specific longitudinal non-exercise equations and further grouped into quartiles. Cox proportional models were used to calculate hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for incidence risks of CVD, heart disease and stroke. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 7 years, a total of 1862 CVD, 1409 heart disease and 612 stroke events occurred. In fully adjusted models, each one MET increment of e-CRF was associated with lower risk of CVD (HR = 0.91, 95%CI = 0.85–0.96 for males, HR = 0.87, 95%CI = 0.81–0.94 for females). Compared with the Quartile (Q)1 group, the HRs (95%CI) of the Q2, Q3 and Q4 groups were 0.84 (0.63–1.03), 0.72 (0.57–0.91) and 0.66 (0.51–0.87) for CVD in males. Females had HRs of 0.79 (0.66–0.96) in Q2, 0.71 (0.57–0.88) in Q3 and 0.58 (0.45–0.75) in Q4 for CVD. The associations between e-CRF and heart disease and stroke were slightly weaker than that for CVD in both males and females. CONCLUSIONS: Higher e-CRF decreases the incident risk of CVD, heart disease and stroke.