Height and Risk of Heart Failure in the Physicians' Health Study

Although previous studies have reported an association between height and cardiovascular disease, it is unclear whether height is associated with the risk of heart failure (HF). We hypothesized that height would be inversely associated with HF risk. We used prospective data from 22,042 male physicians (mean age 53.8 years) from the Physicians' Health Study. Height was self-reported at baseline. Incident HF was ascertained using follow-up questionnaires and validated through review of the medical records in a subsample. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to compute the hazard ratio (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). The mean height ± SD was 1.78 ± 0.07 m. A total of 1,444 HF cases occurred during a mean follow-up of 22.3 years. Compared to subjects in the lowest height category (1.40 to 1.73 m), the HR for HF was 0.86 (95% CI 0.74 to 0.99), 0.82 (95% CI 0.70 to 0.95), and 0.76 (95% CI 0.63 to 0.91) for the height categories of 1.74 to 1.78 m, 1.79 to 1.83 m, and 1.84 to 2.08 m, respectively, after adjustment for age, weight, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus (p for trend = 0.0023). The HR per SD increment in height was 0.92 (95% CI 0.86 to 0.98) in a fully adjusted model. The exclusion of those with prevalent atrial fibrillation, left ventricular hypertrophy, valvular heart disease, and a history of coronary artery bypass grafting yielded similar results (HR per SD 0.88, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.94). In conclusion, our data demonstrated an inverse association between height and incident HF in United States male physicians. Additional studies to elucidate the underlying biologic mechanisms are warranted.