**3. Results**

#### *3.1. Literature Search and Study Characteristics*

The process of literature search is presented in Figure 1. A total of 11,120 articles were identified. After screening the title and abstract, forty-five studies were selected for full-text evaluation. By full-text examination, twenty-five articles were eventually included for data synthesis with 2,027,512 participants and 103,734 CVD deaths [11,13–18,23–40].

**Figure 1.** The flowchart for detailed steps of literature search.

The characteristics of the included studies are shown in Tables 1 and 2. Among these articles, sixteen were from Europe and America, seven from Asia, one from Oceania and one from five continents. The range of the age was 18–84 years old. The population in the study included males and females. Besides, follow-up duration ranged from 5–30 years and the NOS quality score ranged from 6–9 points (Tables S1 and S2).




**Table 1.** *Cont.*




**Table 2.** *Cont.*

infarction.
