Design and rationale of the Proof-ATHERO consortium

Design and rationale of the Proof-ATHERO consortium

This paper – published in Gerontology – outlines the broad aims of the Proof-ATHERO consortium and describes the principal methodology of data management and analysis of study data.

The Proof-ATHERO consortium collates individual-participant data of studies with information on atherosclerosis measures, risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and incident cardiovascular events. More details about the consortium and its motivation can be found here.

In the manuscript we describe specific workflows regarding the coordination of the consortium, data management, and data analysis. In addition, various markers for atherosclerosis collected by the studies and information on individual study designs are reported.

At the time of the publication, Proof-ATHERO comprised 74 studies with 106,846 participants from 25 countries and over 40 cities. 21 studies recruited participants from the general population (n=67,784), 16 from high-risk populations (n=22,677), and 37 as part of clinical trials (n=16,385). Baseline years of contributing studies ranged from April 1980 to July 2014; the latest follow-up was until June 2019. Mean age at baseline was 59 years and 50% were female. Over a total of 830,619 person-years of follow-up, 17,270 incident cardiovascular events (including coronary heart disease and stroke) and 13,270 deaths were recorded, corresponding to cumulative incidences of 2.1% and 1.6% per annum.

The publication is available at https://doi.org/10.1159/000508498.

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