Introduction: Aortic stiffness offers important insight into vascular aging and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. The referent measure of aortic stiffness is carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV). cfPWV can be estimated (ePWV) from age and mean arterial pressure. Few studies have directly compared the association of ePWV to measured cfPWV, particularly in non-White adults. Moreover, whether ePWV and cfPWV correlate similarly with CVD risk remains unexplored.
Aim: (1) To estimate the strength of the agreement between ePWV and cfPWV in both Black and White older adults; and (2) to compare the associations of ePWV and cfPWV with CVD risk factors and determine whether these associations were consistent across races.
Methods and results: We evaluated 4478 [75.2 (SD 5.0) years] Black and White older adults in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. cfPWV was measured using an automated pulse waveform analyzer. ePWV was derived from an equation based on age and mean arterial pressure. Association and agreement between the two measurements were determined using Pearson's correlation coefficient (r), standard error of estimate (SEE), and Bland-Altman analysis. Associations between traditional risk factors with ePWV and cfPWV were evaluated using linear mixed regression models. We observed weak correlations between ePWV and cfPWV within White adults (r = 0.36) and Black adults (r = 0.31). The mean bias for Bland-Altman analysis was low at -0.17 m/s (95%CI: -0.25 to -0.09). However, the inspection of the Bland-Altman plots indicated systematic bias (P < 0.001), which was consistent across race strata. The SEE, or typical absolute error, was 2.8 m/s suggesting high variability across measures. In models adjusted for sex, prevalent diabetes, the number of prevalent cardiovascular diseases, and medication count, both cfPWV and ePWV were positively associated with heart rate, triglycerides, and fasting glucose, and negatively associated with body mass index (BMI) and smoking status in White adults (P < 0.05). cfPWV and ePWV were not associated with heart rate, triglycerides, and fasting glucose in Black adults, while both measures were negatively associated with BMI in Black adults.
Conclusions: Findings suggest a weak association between ePWV and cfPWV in older White and Black adults from ARIC. There were similar weak associations between CVD risk factors with ePWV and cfPWV in White adults with subtle differences in associations in Black adults.
Keywords: Vascular stiffness; blood pressure; health disparities; measurement; pulse wave velocity.