Descriptive study of relationship between cardio-ankle vascular index and biomarkers in vascular-related diseases

ABSTRACT

Background: Cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) was supposed to be an independent predictor for vascular-related events. Biomarkers such as homocysteine (Hcy), N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), and urine albumin(microalbumin) (UAE) have involved the pathophysiological development of arteriosclerosis. The present study was to investigate relationship between CAVI and biomarkers in vascular-related diseases. Methods: A total of 656 subjects (M/F 272/384) from department of Vascular Medicine were enrolled into our study. They were divided into four groups according to the numbers of suffered diseases, healthy group (group 0: subjects without diseases of hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), coronary heart disease (CHD); n = 186), group 1 (with one of diseases of hypertension, CHD, DM; n = 237), group 2 (with two of diseases of hypertension, CHD, DM; n = 174), and group 3 (with all diseases of hypertension, CHD, DM; n = 59). CAVI was measured by VS-1000 apparatus. Results: CAVI was increasing with increasing numbers of suffered vascular-related diseases. Similar results were found in the parameters of biomarkers such as Hcy, log NT-ProBNP, and log UAE. There were positive correlation between log NT-proBNP, Hcy, log UAE, and CAVI in the entire study group and nonhealthy group. Positive correlation between log UAE and CAVI were found in the entire study group after adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, uric acid, and lipids. Multivariate analysis showed that log UAE was an independent associating factor of CAVI in all subjects. Conclusions: CAVI was significantly higher in subjects with hypertension, CHD, and DM. There was correlation between arterial stiffness and biomarkers such as NT-proBNP, Hcy, and UAE.

KEYWORDS:

• Arterial stiffness
• cardio-ankle vascular index
• homocysteine
• N-Terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide
• urine albumin(microalbumin)

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from The Capital Health Research and Development of Special to HY Wang (No. 2011-4026-02), the hospital fund of Peking University Shougang Hospital to Hongyu Wang (No. 2010-Y002 and 2014-Hospital-Clinical-02) and Jinbo Liu (No. 2012Y04), Shougang Keji Fund (2013 Keguan 20-1), and the Seeding Grant for Medicine and Engineering Sciences of Peking University(2014-ME-07).

Disclosures

No conflict of interest, financial or otherwise, is declared by the authors.

Ethics approval

From the ethics committee of the Health Science Center, Peking University, China.