Application research on the quantitative evaluation of carotid arterial elasticity in overweight adolescents using...

Overweight and obesity in adolescents has become a new worldwide health problem. Overweight in adolescence not only leads to persistent overweight and even obesity in adulthood, but also leads to decreased arterial function in adolescence and a greatly increased incidence of chronic diseases in adulthood. However, current imaging techniques cannot detect the early decrease of arterial elasticity. In this study, Ultrafast pulse wave velocity (UFPWV) technology was used to quantitatively evaluate the carotid artery elasticity in adolescents with simple overweight. In order to find the changes of carotid artery elasticity and related influencing factors in overweight adolescents at an early stage.

A total of 56 adolescents who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were enrolled in this study, including 30 adolescents with Body mass index (BMI) ≥24kg/m² as overweight group and 26 adolescents with normal clinical signs and examinations as normal group. Clinical data and biochemical parameters were collected and analyzed for all participants, along with measurements of carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and carotid arterial elasticity, including pulse wave velocity at the beginning of systole (PWVBS) and at the end of systole (PWVES).

The mean values of IMT, PWVBS and PWVES in overweight group were higher than those in normal group. There was significant difference between PWVBS and PWVES (P< 0.05), but not IMT (P >0.05). PWVBS and PWVES in overweight group were positively correlated with BMI, uric acid (UA), total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (all P< 0.05). And negatively correlated with High-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (P< 0.05). Within the overweight group, the subgroup with elevated uric acid (UA) levels showed significantly higher arterial elasticity parameters compared to the subgroup with normal UA levels (P < 0.05), whereas no statistically significant difference was observed in IMT between the two subgroups (P > 0.05). Receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC) analysis showed that when PWVES>4.515 m/s was used as the cut-off value of abnormal carotid elasticity in overweight adolescents in this study, the sensitivity was 71.8%. The specificity was 73.2%.

UFPWV can detect early changes in carotid artery elasticity in overweight adolescents. When hyperlipidemia and hyperuricemia coexist, they exert a synergistic detrimental effect on arterial elastic function. The arterial elasticity indexes PWVBS and PWVES are significantly correlated with a variety of traditional risk factors of atherosclerosis (AS), which can be used AS effective indicators to predict early AS.