Article Text
Abstract
Objective To examine whether elevated resting heart rate (RHR) is an independent risk factor for mortality or a mere marker of physical fitness (VO2Max).
Methods This was a prospective cohort study: the Copenhagen Male Study, a longitudinal study of healthy middle-aged employed men. Subjects with sinus rhythm and without known cardiovascular disease or diabetes were included. RHR was assessed from a resting ECG at study visit in 1985–1986. VO2Max was determined by the Åstrand bicycle ergometer test in 1970–1971. Subjects were classified into categories according to level of RHR. Associations with mortality were studied in multivariate Cox models adjusted for physical fitness, leisure-time physical activity and conventional cardiovascular risk factors.
Results 2798 subjects were followed for 16 years. 1082 deaths occurred. RHR was inversely related to physical fitness (p<0.001). Overall, increasing RHR was highly associated with mortality in a graded manner after adjusting for physical fitness, leisure-time physical activity and other cardiovascular risk factors. Compared to men with RHR ≤50, those with RHR >90 had an HR (95% CI) of 3.06 (1.97 to 4.75). With RHR as a continuous variable, risk of mortality increased with 16% (10–22) per 10 beats per minute (bpm). There was a borderline interaction with smoking (p=0.07); risk per 10 bpm increase in RHR was 20% (12–27) in smokers, and 14% (4–24) in non-smokers.
Conclusions Elevated RHR is a risk factor for mortality independent of physical fitness, leisure-time physical activity and other major cardiovascular risk factors.
- Coronary Physiology
- Cardiac Function
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Supplementary materials
HTML Page - index.htslp
Files in this Data Supplement: