Vascular stiffening can be viewed as a measure of the """"""""biologic aging"""""""" of the vessels and may be an early indication of subsequent atherosclerosis and/or hypertension. The study of vascular stiffness in human populations requires accurate and reproducible measures. There is currently no gold standard for measurement of vascular stiffness in epidemiological studies. The investigators propose to evaluate three different techniques, pulse wave velocity, ultrasound imaging and analysis of the pressure pulsation signal, with respect to their reproducibility and relationship to subclinical carotid atherosclerosis. Vascular stiffness will be evaluated in a variety of populations and a wide range of potential risk factors will be explored. A total of 1250 subjects will be studied. First, they will obtain vascular stiffness measures in populations undergoing carotid ultrasound in their department for whom a wealth of risk factor data are already available. These include 300 perimenopausal women, 300 postmenopausal women, and 200 middle-aged (40 - 70 years) African Americans and Caucasians. In addition, they will recruit 200 young adults (20 - 40 years), African American and Caucasian. Their preliminary data suggest that homocysteine may related to vascular stiffness, and this will be carefully evaluated in African American and Caucasian subjects. Finally, additional nutritional factors will be explored by performing vascular stiffness measures on 250 subjects from the Pittsburgh cohort of the INTERMAP study. This will allow the investigators to evaluate associations between vascular stiffness and detailed nutritional data that have been collected in a state-of-the-art manner. In summary, the investigators state that this study will provide a comprehensive overview of vascular stiffness measures in relationship to age, sex, race, menopausal status, hormone use, carotid atherosclerosis, echocardiographic measures, risk factors (including blood pressure, weight, body fat distribution, body fatness, lipids, diet, sodium and potassium excretion, vascular reactivity, psychosocial variables), and subclinical and clinical cardiovascular disease. They further state that conducting the study in one laboratory with careful, reproducible measures will allow a thorough evaluation of vascular stiffness, which is likely to be an important component of atherosclerosis and hypertension risk.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AG014108-04
Application #
6328632
Study Section
Epidemiology and Disease Control Subcommittee 2 (EDC)
Program Officer
Dutta, Chhanda
Project Start
1997-12-15
Project End
2002-11-30
Budget Start
2000-12-01
Budget End
2001-11-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2001
Total Cost
$309,781
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pittsburgh
Department
Public Health & Prev Medicine
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
053785812
City
Pittsburgh
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
15213
Wildman, Rachel P; Farhat, Ghada N; Patel, Ami S et al. (2005) Weight change is associated with change in arterial stiffness among healthy young adults. Hypertension 45:187-92
Wildman, Rachel P; Mehta, Vinay; Thompson, Trina et al. (2004) Obesity is associated with larger arterial diameters in Caucasian and African-American young adults. Diabetes Care 27:2997-9
Wildman, Rachel P; Mackey, Rachel H; Bostom, Andrew et al. (2003) Measures of obesity are associated with vascular stiffness in young and older adults. Hypertension 42:468-73