Life's Essential 8 and cardiovascular health: Protective effects on chronic respiratory diseases.

Background: Chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) pose a global health challenge. While individual lifestyle factors are known to influence CRDs risk, the collective role of comprehensive cardiovascular health (CVH) metrics remains less clear. Life's Essential 8 (LE8) provides a holistic measure of CVH, but its association with CRDs and related mortality is not well-established at the population level. Methods: The observational study was based on the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 2007-2018). We adjusted for confounding factors and used survey-weighted logistic regression analysis to assess the association between LE8 and the risk of CRDs and the subtypes. Restricted cubic splines (RCS) evaluated non-linear relationships. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were also conducted. Cox models investigated LE8's impact on all-cause and chronic lower respiratory diseases (CLRDs) mortality. Results: The observational study included 30,863 participants. After adjusting for confounders, survey-weighted logistic regression demonstrates a negative association between LE8 and the risk of CRDs and the four subtypes, with emphysema showing the most significant association (OR = 0.96, 95 % CI: 0.95, 0.97, Conclusion: LE8 inversely correlates with CRDs, and high CVH protects against all-cause and CLRDs mortality.