Figure 1.

Hazard ratios for cardiovascular mortality and incidence by urine cadmium concentrations (n=3,348). Lines represent adjusted hazard ratios based on restricted quadratic splines for log-transformed cadmium concentrations with knots at the 10^th, 50^th and 90^th percentiles, which correspond to 0.40, 0.92 and 2.14 μg/g creatinine, respectively. The reference was set at the 10^th percentile of cadmium distribution. Vertical bars represent the histogram of urine cadmium distribution in the study population. The models were adjusted for sex, post-menopausal status for women (yes, no), education (< high school, ≥ high school), body mass index (kg/m²), total cholesterol (mg/dL), estimated LDL- cholesterol (mg/dL), hypertension (yes, no), diabetes (yes, no), estimated glomerular filtration rate (ml/min/1.73m²), smoking status (never, former, current) and cumulative smoking dose (pack-years modeled as restricted cubic splines with knots at 10, 20 and 30 pack-years). Cardiovascular incidence included fatal and non-fatal events.