Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between life’s essential 8 and frailty in community-dwelling older adults

Key Points

1. In 2022, the American Heart Association (AHA) updated Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) to better assess cardiovascular health and address ongoing risks.

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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

The American Heart Association (AHA) revised its cardiovascular health (CVH) assessment tool, Life’s Essential 8 (LE8), in 2022 (1). The purpose of the update was to address the ongoing risks and factors linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and support the well-being of both individuals and population (1).

The original LE8 had seven metrics across behaviors and health factors that defined CVH. These factors included: 1) Healthy Diet; 2) Physical Activity; 3) Avoiding Cigarette Smoke (Non‑smoking); 4) Healthy Body Weight (BMI); 5) Healthy Blood Glucose; 6) Healthy Cholesterol (Total Cholesterol); and 7) Healthy Blood Pressure (1).

With the 2022 update, AHA added a sleep metric (1). See Table 1 for additional information about the 2022 updates. The behavior and health factors seen in Table 1 are known to be associated with frailty, however, the associations between LE8 score and frailty among community-dwelling older adults is unclear.

The objective of this study was to determine the associations between LE8 score and frailty among community-dwelling older adults.

Revision of this cardiovascular health assessment tool was done to address the ongoing risks/factors linked to cardiovascular disease and to support the well-being of both individuals and population.

The Life’s Essential 8 provides modifiable health-related and behavior-related factors that providers can address and patients can change.

METHODS

Population: Community-dwelling older adults aged 65 and above.

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