Association between sociodemographic variables, healthy habits and stress with vascular age and SCORE2

Abstract

Introduction: cardiovascular diseases are a global public health concern due to their high morbidity, mortality, and prevalence. Numerous scales based on different risk factors have been used to assess cardiovascular risk (CVR). The aim of this study is to evaluate how various sociodemo-graphic variables, healthy habits, and stress are associated with the values of two CVR scales. Materials and methods: a descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 22,976 Spanish workers, analyzing the association between sociodemographic variables (age, gender, socioeconomic status), healthy habits (smoking, alcohol consumption, adherence to the Mediterranean diet, and physical activity), and stress with two CVR scales: vascular age (VA) and the Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation-2 (SCORE2). Results: all the scales analyzed show an association with elevated VA and SCORE2 values. The variables with the strongest associations (highest odds ratios) are age, type of occupation, and smoking. Conclusions: the profile of individuals most at risk of having high VA and SCORE2 values is a male over 50 years old, belonging to lower socioeconomic strata (manual laborer), a smoker, a regular alcohol consumer, sedentary, with low adherence to the Mediterranean diet, and high stress levels.