Sustained stress, assessed as a high allostatic load score (ALS), is an independent cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor in older adults but its associations in young people are undefined. Since neurological maturation impacts stress adaptation and CVD risk, we assessed the relationship of ALS with CVD profile by using a tiered approach stratified by age [emerging adults (EA) aged 20-24 yr vs. young adults (YA) aged 25-30 yr] and ALS (high vs. low). In 1,054 healthy participants of the African Prospective Study on Early Detection and Identification of Cardiovascular Disease and Hypertension (African-PREDICT), we determined: