Trends in ethnic disparities in clinical cardiovascular health among Chinese adults from 2016-2020

Background and aims: Little is known about the long-term trends in ethnic differences in cardiovascular health (CVH) in China in recent years. This study aimed to investigate ethnic differences in CVH and identify long-term trends in China.Methods and results: This survey was based on the physical examination data of Tacheng Prefecture in China from 2016 to 2020, and included 1,947,938 physical examination participants aged over 20 years for analysis. The American Heart Association (AHA) criteria were used to evaluate the clinical CVH of the subjects. The time trends from 2016 to 2020 were assessed using a weighted linear regression model stratified by ethnicity. The ethnic groups included Han, Kazakh, Hui, Mongolian, Uyghur, among others. The mean ideal clinical cardiovascular score was highest in Hui and lowest in Uyghur. The scores increased from 5.99 (5.95-6.03) to 6.11 (6.08-6.14) in Kazakh males and from 6.05 (5.99-6.11) to 6.11 (6.06-6.16) in Hui males among participants (P linear trend < 0.001). The scores for the other groups declined significantly from 2016 to 2020(P linear trend < 0.05). In the sensitivity analysis, the trend remained unchanged after calculating the body mass index (BMI) cut-off for China.Conclusion: Clinical CVH differences still exist among different ethnic groups, with a decline in CVH from 2016 to 2020 in all except Kazakh and Hui males. This may indicate a higher incidence and poorer prognosis of cardiovascular disease in the future and can provide guidelines for improving CVH.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Italian Diabetes Society, the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis, the Italian Society of Human Nutrition and the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Federico II University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).