Novel metabolic indicators and the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with hypertension: A primary-care cohort study

Background and aims: Data are limited on whether several easily measured indices serve as effective tools for Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment in hypertensive patients. This study aimed to assess the associations of metabolic score for insulin resistance (METS-IR), lipid accumulation product (LAP), and visceral adiposity index (VAI) with CVD risk in hypertensive patients.

Methods and results: Our data were drawn from the medical records of primary-care institutions in China. The present study included 306,680 individuals with hypertension attending primary healthcare centers. Cox regression analyses were applied to assess the associations of novel metabolic indicators with the risk of CVD. During a median follow-up of 1.98 years, 5820 participants developed CVD. When comparing with the lowest quartile of the indices, the highest quartile of METS-IR, LAP, and VAI was associated with 1.25-fold (95 % CI: 1.16-1.35), 1.15-fold (95 % CI: 1.05-1.25), and 1.19-fold (95 % CI: 1.10-1.28) risk of CVD after adjusting for potential confounders.

Conclusion: This study provided additional evidence that novel metabolic indicators like METS-IR, LAP, and VAI were associated with the risk of CVD. These results suggest that proactive assessment of visceral adiposity and insulin resistance could be helpful for the effective clinical management of the hypertensive population.