Association of Life’s Essential 8 With All-cause Mortality Across Cardiometabolic Disease Strata in U.S. Adults.
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Lili Yu
Location
Russell Union Ballroom
Type of Research
On-going
Session Format
Poster Presentation
College
Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health
Department
Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences (BEES)
Abstract
Background: Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) has been established as a comprehensive metric of cardiovascular health; however, its association with mortality across varying levels of cardiometabolic disease (CMD) burden and cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) warrants further investigation. We examined the association of LE8 with all-cause mortality among U.S. adults and evaluated how baseline CMD burden modifies these associations.
Methods: Data were analyzed for 77,382 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) linked to the National Death Index. LE8 was evaluated both continuously (per 10-point increase) and categorically (low, moderate, and high). Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all-cause mortality.
Results: The study represented an estimated 556.3 million U.S. adults. Higher LE8 scores correlated with significantly lower CMD burden; the prevalence of CMM decreased from 20% in the low LE8 group to 4.0% in the high LE8 group. In fully adjusted models, each 10-point increase in LE8 score was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR, 0.873; 95% CI, 0.822–0.928). Compared with low LE8 scores, high LE8 scores were associated with a significantly reduced mortality risk overall (HR, 0.665; 95% CI, 0.516–0.858) and among males (HR, 0.624; 95% CI, 0.451–0.861), though the association in females was not statistically significant. Among individual components, physical activity demonstrated the strongest protective association (HR, 0.566; 95% CI, 0.491–0.652. The protective association of high LE8 remained among participants without baseline CMD (HR, 0.486; 95% CI, 0.290–0.814).
Conclusion: Higher LE8 scores are significantly associated with reduced all-cause mortality and lower cardiometabolic disease burden. The mortality benefit is heavily driven by physical activity and remains highly protective regardless of baseline CMD status.
Program Description
.
Start Date
4-23-2026 2:00 PM
End Date
4-23-2026 4:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Kizza, Timothy; Adebile, Tolulope; Azu, Emmanuel Unimke; and Yu, Lili, "Association of Life’s Essential 8 With All-cause Mortality Across Cardiometabolic Disease Strata in U.S. Adults." (2026). GS4 Student Scholars Symposium. 201.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/research_symposium/2026/2026/201
Association of Life’s Essential 8 With All-cause Mortality Across Cardiometabolic Disease Strata in U.S. Adults.
Russell Union Ballroom
Background: Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) has been established as a comprehensive metric of cardiovascular health; however, its association with mortality across varying levels of cardiometabolic disease (CMD) burden and cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) warrants further investigation. We examined the association of LE8 with all-cause mortality among U.S. adults and evaluated how baseline CMD burden modifies these associations.
Methods: Data were analyzed for 77,382 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) linked to the National Death Index. LE8 was evaluated both continuously (per 10-point increase) and categorically (low, moderate, and high). Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all-cause mortality.
Results: The study represented an estimated 556.3 million U.S. adults. Higher LE8 scores correlated with significantly lower CMD burden; the prevalence of CMM decreased from 20% in the low LE8 group to 4.0% in the high LE8 group. In fully adjusted models, each 10-point increase in LE8 score was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR, 0.873; 95% CI, 0.822–0.928). Compared with low LE8 scores, high LE8 scores were associated with a significantly reduced mortality risk overall (HR, 0.665; 95% CI, 0.516–0.858) and among males (HR, 0.624; 95% CI, 0.451–0.861), though the association in females was not statistically significant. Among individual components, physical activity demonstrated the strongest protective association (HR, 0.566; 95% CI, 0.491–0.652. The protective association of high LE8 remained among participants without baseline CMD (HR, 0.486; 95% CI, 0.290–0.814).
Conclusion: Higher LE8 scores are significantly associated with reduced all-cause mortality and lower cardiometabolic disease burden. The mortality benefit is heavily driven by physical activity and remains highly protective regardless of baseline CMD status.
