Abstract P384: Healthy Lifestyle Factors and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in a Prospective Cohort of Women With a History of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Background: Women with a history of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Whether healthy lifestyle practices can mitigate this risk is unclear. Aims: To prospectively assess associations of healthy lifestyle factors with CVD risk in women with a history of GDM. Methods: We included 4,372 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II with a prior clinician diagnosis of GDM who were free of cancer or CVD at the time of the index pregnancy. Healthy lifestyle factors, which were updated every 2-4 years, included non-current smoking, body mass index<25 kg/m 2 , regular physical activity (>500 MET-min/week), high-quality diet (above median on the Alternative Healthy Eating Index), and moderate alcohol consumption (>0-15 g/day). A composite outcome of CVD was defined as the combination of nonfatal/fatal myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, angiographically confirmed angina, and coronary artery bypass surgery or angioplasty/stenting. Multivariate-adjusted Cox models were used to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: During a median 28 years of follow-up, 179 incident CVD events were ascertained. Compared to women with 0 or 1 healthy lifestyle factor, HR (95% CI) for risk of CVD among those who had 2, 3, and ≥4 factors were 1.02 (0.68, 1.53), 0.45 (0.28, 0.74), and 0.32 (0.18, 0.60), respectively ( P trend < 0.001) ( Table 1 ). Similar results were observed for clinical CVD events (nonfatal/fatal MI or stroke) and total MI. When modeled continuously, each additional healthy lifestyle factor was associated with a lower risk of the composite outcome, HR (95% CI): 0.67 (0.57, 0.80); clinical CVD, HR (95% CI): 0.74 (0.58, 0.94); and MI, HR (95% CI): 0.61 (0.43, 0.86). We estimated that 62.5% (95% CI: 34.9%, 79.0%) of the CVD risk in this population was potentially avoidable with adherence to ≥4 healthy lifestyle factors. Conclusion: Greater adherence to healthy lifestyle factors was associated with a significant reduction in CVD risk in women with a history of GDM.