Koh, Insu

AbstractHigher and lower hemoglobin concentrations are associated with coronary heart disease (CHD), but whether this risk is consistent across age, sex, and race is unclear. The Reasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study is an observational cohort study of 30 239 black, and white, adults aged 45 and older recruited 2003‐7. Participants were included if they had hemoglobin measures, were CHD‐free at baseline, and had all baseline variables. The primary outcome was incident CHD. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for incident CHD by hemoglobin concentration. This was expressed as a continuous variable and divided into age‐, sex‐, and race‐specific quintiles. The 16 332 participants were included, contributing 114 362 person‐years of follow‐up and 915 incident CHD events. The mean age was 63 years, 35% were male, 41% were black, and the mean baseline hemoglobin was 13.6 g/dL (SD 1.4). A significant non‐linear association between hemoglobin and CHD was identified (P < .001). This association differed significantly by race (P = .025) but not by sex or age. In whites, the risk for incident CHD was higher in the lowest (HR 2.28, 95% CI 1.61, 3.33) and highest (HR 1.94, 95% CI 1.35, 2.79) hemoglobin quintiles relative to the third quintile. For blacks, only those in the lowest hemoglobin quintile had an increased risk for incident CHD events (HR 1.70, 95% CI 1.20, 2.41). Hemoglobin is an independent risk factor for CHD in whites and blacks but with different hemoglobin concentrations conferring different risks.

INTRODUCTION: African-Americans (blacks) have higher risk of stroke and coronary heart disease (CHD) - collectively referred to here as cardiovascular disease (CVD), than Caucasian-Americans (whites). Though partly explained by traditional cardiovascular risk factors, half of the excess risk in blacks is not explained by known risk factors. Recent data suggest increased risk of CVD and mortality in individuals with clonal hematopoiesis, which often presents as cytopenia. Using peripheral blood cytopenia as a marker of clonal hematopoiesis, we examined the association between cytopenia and risk of CVD and mortality in blacks and whites. METHODS: The REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort study enrolled 30,239 US black and white adults between 2003 and 2007 (41% black). Socio-demographics and medical history were obtained by telephone interview, and laboratory studies (including complete blood count [CBC]) and physical exam from an in-home visit at baseline. Participants or their proxies were contacted every 6 months to ascertain CVD events, hospitalizations or deaths, and medical records were reviewed to confirm these events. Cytopenia was defined using thresholds in Table 1 as presence of 2 or more of the following: i) hemoglobin in age-, sex-, and race-specific lowest 5th percentile; ii) white cell count in race-specific lowest 5th percentile; iii) platelet count in lowest 5th percentile, and iv) macrocytosis (MCV >98fL). Participants with pre-baseline history of stroke (for analyses including stroke or CVD mortality) or CHD (for analyses including CHD or CVD mortality) and those with missing CBC were excluded. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) of incident CVD and mortality associated with cytopenia. Models adjusted for socio-demographics (Model 1), Framingham stroke or CHD risk factors (Model 2), and estimated glomerular filtration rate and C-reactive protein (Model 3) were used. Differences in the association of cytopenia with outcomes by race were tested using cross-product interaction terms, using a p of <0.1 for interaction. RESULTS: The study included 19,544 participants who were followed for a median of ~9 years. There were 798 (4.3% of those at risk) incident stroke cases and 727 (4.3%) incident CHD cases; 1033 (5.3%) died of CVD, and 3933 (20.1%) died of all-causes. Cytopenia was present in 378 (1.9%) participants, ranging from 0.9% to 3.5% in blacks, 1.4 to 3.9% in whites, 1.6 to 3.9% in men, and 0.9 to 1.8% in women, with increasing prevalence by age. There was no association between cytopenia and stroke or CHD risk in any model. However, cytopenia was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality (HR=1.73, 95%CI: 1.34-2.22), and CVD mortality (HR=1.56, 95% CI: 1.11-2.19) in the extended risk factor Model 3 and also in CVD risk factor adjusted model (Model 2), with little evidence of confounding (Table 2). While the race by cytopenia interaction term was not significant in any model for incident CHD or mortality, the interaction for cytopenia by race for stroke was statistically significant (p-interaction=0.08) in Model 2. The HR of stroke for cytopenia in blacks was 0.86 (95%CI: 0.46-1.61), and for whites was 1.96 (95%CI: 1.0-3.82). CONCLUSION: In this large biracial cohort, cytopenia was associated with increased all-cause and CVD mortality. Cytopenia was a race-specific risk factor for stroke affecting white Americans but not black Americans. With growing knowledge on the role of clonal hematopoiesis in CVD risk and mortality, further work is needed to determine if our phenotype of cytopenia is accurate in classifying clonal hematopoiesis and for determining the mortality risk. Given these findings, assessing clonal hematopoiesis and outcomes related to clonal hematopoiesis in diverse populations is critical to understanding the interactions between somatic mutations in hematopoietic cells and CVD/mortality risk. Disclosures Safford: Amgen: Research Funding.