Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): Introduction: Heightened psychosocial stress is a CVD risk factor. While stressors are common and often co-occur, identifying sources and patterns of psychosocial stress exposure may provide insight into individual susceptibility to CVD. Therefore, we sought to identify and examine the longitudinal associations of baseline psychosocial stress subgroups with CVD events in MESA.
Methods: Data from 6,349 adults (aged: 62.2±10.2 years; 52.9% women) from the MESA cohort with no prior CVD event at baseline (years 2000-2002) were used in this analysis. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to specify distinct stress subgroups based on 6 variables: chronic burden, neighborhood safety, adequate food shopping, neighborhood noise, lifetime- and past-year discrimination. Five classes were determined after examining traditional fit indices. Adjudicated fatal and nonfatal CVD events were ascertained in annual follow-up visits through the year 2019. Cox proportional hazards models with sequential adjustment of baseline variables were used to examine the associations between subgroup membership and CVD events.
Results: Five distinct stress subgroups were identified via LCA and were labeled “moderate neighborhood noise” (12.1%), “excessive noise/crime” (6.4%), “elevated on all” (6.3%), “high discrimination/safe neighborhood” (21.4%), “optimal” (53.8%) (see figure). By the year 2019, 1,121 participants had experienced a CVD event. Membership in the “elevated on all” and “high discrimination/safe neighborhood” subgroups (see table) were associated with higher risk of a CVD event when adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics and cardiovascular health metrics. However, when adjusted for measures of anxiety and depression, possible mediators, only membership in the “high discrimination/safe neighborhood” subgroup was associated with increased risk of a CVD event.
Conclusions: Among 5 distinct stress subgroups those experiencing high discrimination had higher risk for CVD events.