Ideal cardiovascular health in former smokers

Abstract

Former smokers remain at increased risk for cardiovascular diseases compared to never smokers, but have lower risk than current smokers. We therefore hypothesized that former smokers would have an ideal cardiovascular health phenotype that was intermediate between current and never smokers. Differences in ideal cardiovascular health between never (n = 1025), former (n = 428), and current (n = 108) smokers were evaluated in the My Research Legacy study, which collected cardiovascular health data from the Life’s Simple 7 survey and digital health devices. Former smokers had a higher burden of prevalent cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and hypercholesterolemia compared to current and never smokers (all p < 0.01). Former smokers’ Life’s Simple 7 Health Scores, a measure of ideal cardiovascular health, were intermediate between current and never smokers (4.9 ± 1.3 vs. 6.3 ± 1.5 vs. 7.0 ± 1.4, p < 0.01). As former smokers shared similarities with both current and never smokers, we performed a cluster analysis, which identified two phenogroups of former smokers. The phenogroups differed significantly across all 7 cardiovascular health and behavior categories (all p < 0.01). These findings suggest that former smokers are a heterogeneous group and increased attention to cardiovascular health factors and behaviors is warranted to achieve ideal cardiovascular health.