2025 Volume 89 Issue 5 Pages 620-628
Background: Biological age serves as a common starting point for various age-related diseases and can be associated with a wide range of cardiovascular outcomes. However, associations between cardiovascular biological age (CBA) and various types of cardiovascular disease (CVD) remain unclear.
Methods and Results: Analyzing 262,343 UK Biobank participants, we constructed CBA based on composite biomarkers using the Klemera-Doubal method (denoted as KDM-CBA). We measured KDM-CBA acceleration as the difference between KDM-CBA and chronological age. We then examined the associations between KDM-CBA and 17 CVD types using Cox proportional hazard models. We used restricted cubic spline models to assess potential nonlinear associations of KDM-CBA and KDM-CBA acceleration with different types of CVDs. We observed that KDM-CBA (per 1SD increase) was associated with various CVD types, but with different extent (hypertension: hazard ratio (HR)=2.115, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.083–2.148; coronary atherosclerosis: HR=1.711, 95% CI: 1.545–1.896). We observed similar results for KDM-CBA acceleration and KDM-CBA. KDM-CBA and KDM-CBA acceleration showed J-type nonlinear associations with nearly all CVD types (cutoff values of ≈55 and −1.7 years for KDM-CBA and KDM-CBA acceleration, respectively).
Conclusions: Our study showed that CBA is associated with increased incidence of CVD, which further validates aging as a common starting point for different CVD types as well as highlighting CBA’s role as an early CVD indicator, providing valuable insights for CVD interventions.
