van Bussel EF, Hoevenaar-Blom MP, Poortvliet RKE, et al. - Researchers analyzed 12 studies with 11 unique cohorts, identified from PubMed and EMBASE, to evaluate the predictive ability of > 1 of fourteen traditional risk factors (TRFs) for fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular disease (CVD), in the general older population (aged 60+). In 2 to 11 cohorts, TRF was assessed, and retained in 0–70% of the cohorts: age (70%), diabetes (64%), male gender (57%), systolic blood pressure (SBP) (50%), smoking (36%), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) (33%), left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) (33%), total cholesterol (22%), diastolic blood pressure (20%), antihypertensive medication use (20%), body mass index (BMI) (0%), hypertension (0%), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (0%). Relative to middle-aged adults, CVD was predicted by different risk factors in individuals aged 60+ and current prediction models performed only moderate at best. Based on most studies, valuable predictors of CVD in old-age are age, gender and diabetes. According to the data, SBP, HDL cholesterol and smoking may also hold value as predictors. Very limited or no additional value was suggested for other blood pressure and cholesterol associated variables, BMI, and LVH. Overestimation of the predictors happened without competing risk analysis.