Most U.S. adults have a “heart age” several years older than their chronological age — sometimes by more than a decade. And that gap is wider among men and among those with lower incomes or education or who identify as Black or Hispanic, according to a new study led by Northwestern Medicine.

As part of the study, the Northwestern scientists created a free online tool that calculates a person’s “heart age” based on their risk for cardiovascular disease, using routine health data such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and whether a person smokes or has diabetes. The study team stressed that the calculator is not a substitute for clinical care and should be used in consultation with a doctor.

Traditionally, heart disease risk has been calculated as a percentage. For example, a health care clinician may tell a patient, “8 out of 100 people with your profile may have a heart event in the next 10 years.” The new calculator, based on the American Heart Association’s PREVENT equations, reframes that risk as an age to make it easier for patients to understand.

“We hope this tool helps doctors and patients discuss risk for heart disease more effectively so we can better inform what therapies can prevent heart attacks, stroke or heart failure events from ever happening,” said senior author Dr. Sadiya Khan, the Magerstadt professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the development of the PREVENT equations.

Evaluating the tool on Americans

To evaluate the age calculator, Khan and her team tested it on more than 14,000 nationally representative U.S. adults, ages 30 to 79, who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2011 and 2020. All participants had no prior history of cardiovascular disease.

On average, they found that women had a heart age of 55.4, compared to a chronological age of 51.3. For men, the age gap was wider: an average heart age of 56.7 compared to an average chronological age of 49.7.

Among men with a high school education or less, nearly one-third had a heart age more than 10 years older than their actual age. The discordance between heart and chronological age was also significantly wider among adults who identified as Black or Hispanic.

Black men had a heart age 8.5 years older than their actual age, compared to 7.9 years for Hispanic men, 6.7 years for Asian men and 6.4 years for white men. The gaps were 6.2 years for Black women, 4.8 years for Hispanic women, 3.7 years for white women and 2.8 years for Asian women.

Especially important for young adults

Even with major gains in public health, heart disease has remained the leading cause of death in the U.S. for more than a century. That’s partly because many adults who could benefit from preventive care still aren’t getting it, Khan said.

“Many people who should be on medicine to lower their risk for heart attack, stroke or heart failure are not on these medications. We hope this new heart age calculator will help support discussions about prevention and ultimately improve health for all people,” said Khan, who also is an associate professor of medicine (cardiology) at Feinberg and a Northwestern Medicine preventive cardiologist.

“The important thing is that we have very good options available in our toolbox to help slow that aging down if we can identify it. This may be even more important in younger people who don’t often think about their risk for heart disease,” Khan added.

Khan said her team now plan to study whether presenting risk this way improves outcomes and helps people better understand their need for preventive therapies.

The study is titled, “PREVENT Risk Age Equations and Population Distribution in US Adults.”