Arterial stiffness is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is the most recognized and established index of arterial stiffness. An emerging automatic measure of PWV primarily used in the Asian countries is brachial-ankle PWV (baPWV).
To systematically compare these two methodologies, we conducted a multicenter study involving a total of 2287 patients.
There was a significant positive relation between baPWV and cfPWV (r = 0.73). Average baPWV was approximately 20% higher than cfPWV. Both cfPWV and baPWV were significantly and positively associated with age (r = 0.56 and 0.64), systolic blood pressure (r = 0.49 and 0.61), and the Framingham risk score (r = 0.48 and 0.63). The areas under the receiver operating curves (ROCs) of PWV to predict the presence of both stroke and coronary artery disease were comparable between cfPWV and baPWV.
Collectively, these results indicate that cfPWV and baPWV are indices of arterial stiffness that exhibit similar extent of associations with cardiovascular disease risk factors and clinical events.
aUniversity of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
bTohoku Rosai Hospital, Japan
cNational Cardiovascular Center, Japan
dOsaka University, Japan
eOsaka City University, Japan
fTokyo Medical University, Japan
gSawayama Clinic, Japan
hTokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Center, Japan
Received 11 December, 2008
Revised 12 April, 2009
Accepted 21 May, 2009
Correspondence to Hirofumi Tanaka, PhD, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA Tel: +1 512 232 4801; fax: +1 512 471 0946; e-mail: htanaka@mail.utexas.edu
