Prevention & lipidsCross-sectional study
Assessing Differences Between Epigenetic versus Chronologic Age for Cardiovascular Risk Assessments in the United States
- Analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2002 data linked to National Death Index follow-up
- Survey weighted Cox models
- Weighted Harrell C statistics
- 95% CIs obtained by bootstrap resampling
Authors' conclusion
Biologic PREVENT variants were associated with mortality but did not improve discrimination compared with chronologic PREVENT, suggesting biological aging metrics may complement rather than replace chronological age in cardiovascular risk prediction.
Study context
- Population
- Adults aged 50–79 years without baseline cardiovascular disease and with DNA methylation data507 participants died, including 140 cardiovascular deaths, mean follow-up 17.35 years
- Participants
- 1,516 adults
- Exposure
- substituting epigenetic age for chronologic age within PREVENT
Main finding
All-cause mortality
Hazard ratio
1.57 per 5-percentage-point increase in predicted risk
95% CI 1.45–1.70
Chronologic PREVENT
HR 1.57 per 5-percentage-point increase in predicted risk (95% CI 1.45–1.70)
Per 5-percentage-point increase in predicted risk, as printed
As reported in the abstract
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
| Outcome | Chronologic PREVENTC | Biologic PREVENT variants |
|---|---|---|
| Discrimination for all-cause mortality (C statistic) | 0.74 (95% CI 0.72–0.77) | C range 0.66-0.73 |
| Discrimination for cardiovascular mortality (C statistic) | 0.78 (95% CI 0.73–0.84) | C range 0.71-0.77 |
Cardiovascular mortality
- Biologic variants HR range
- 1.47-1.67
Parts of this Brief are withheld: the automatic checks could not confirm them against the abstract.
Original publication
Assessing Differences Between Epigenetic versus Chronologic Age for Cardiovascular Risk Assessments in the United States. Circ Popul Health Outcomes. Published 31 August 2026. doi:10.1161/circoutcomes.126.013600
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it