Life's Essential 8 Is Enhanced With a Psychological Health Measure

Adding a ninth dimension based on depression scores by the Patient Health Questionnaires is feasible, authors say

By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 21, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A measure of cardiovascular health (CVH) based on Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) that is enhanced with a measure of psychological health strongly predicts mortality, according to a study published in the August issue of JACC: Advances.

Vanessa T. Dinh, M.P.H., from the Mailman School of Public Health at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, and colleagues evaluated associations of a CVH construct enhanced with a ninth metric for psychological health based on depression screening using the Patient Health Questionnaires (PHQ-2 and PHQ-9). Analysis included 21,183 adults.

The researchers found that high versus low CVH scores, enhanced with PHQ-2 and PHQ-9, were associated with 69 percent and 70 percent lower mortality risk, while a high versus low LE8 score was associated with 65 percent lower risk. For both LE8 and enhanced CVH scores, higher scores predicted lower mortality risk in both sexes and in Black and White adults, but not Hispanic adults. Higher scores for both LE8 and enhanced CVH were also associated with lower cardiovascular and cancer mortality. Both enhanced CVH scores had excellent performance for predicting mortality (C-statistic, 0.843 versus 0.842), which was similar to the LE8 score.

“Inclusion of psychological health as a ninth CVH metric, with depression screening as a feasible proxy in clinical and public health settings, should be considered,” the authors write.