Abstract 2382: Self-rated Health is an Independent Predictor of Incident Stroke: The REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study

Objective: Self assessments of health contain important information on factors that influence outcomes that are not routinely captured in traditional risk factors. Few data are available on whether they are associated with incident stroke independent of traditional risk factors. Methods: We evaluated the association between self-rated health and incident stroke using data from the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, a national, population-based cohort study of 30,239 African-American and white adults aged ≥ 45 years. Framingham stroke risk factors (current smoking, systolic blood pressure, antihypertensive medication use, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease and left ventricular hypertrophy) and self-rated health were collected during a baseline examination. Participants reported self-rated health on a single question “In general, how would you rate your health?” with response options of excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. Similar to previous studies, excellent and very good self-rated health was grouped for analysis. Results: Of 24,708 REGARDS study participants without a history of stroke at baseline and included in this analysis, 534 had an incident stroke over a median of 5.1 years of follow-up. Compared to participants reporting excellent/very good health, the unadjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals [CI]) for incident stroke associated with good, fair and poor health were 1.41 (1.17 - 1.70), 1.98 (1.56 - 2.51), and 3.21 (2.21 - 4.67), respectively (p-trend Conclusion: Self-rated health is an independent predictor of incident stroke even after adjusting for traditional stroke risk factors.