Clinical Investigation
Carotid Atherosclerosis
A Longitudinal Study of Carotid Plaque and Risk of Ischemic Cardiovascular Disease in the Chinese Population

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.echo.2011.02.011Get rights and content

Background

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of carotid plaque in predicting ischemic cardiovascular risk, which has been intensively reported in Western populations but not yet in the Chinese population, in which the cardiovascular disease profile is significantly different.

Methods

Cox proportional-hazards regression was used to analyze associations between the presence of carotid plaque and the number of segments of carotid arteries with plaque (total plaque score) and the risk for subsequent ischemic cardiovascular disease (ICVD) events, including ischemic stroke and coronary heart disease, in 3,258 Chinese men and women aged 38 to 79 years at baseline. During 5 years of follow-up, 137 ICVD events were identified.

Results

The person-year incidence was 10.6 per 1,000 for ICVD, 6.7 per 1,000 for ischemic stroke, and 4.4 per 1,000 for coronary heart disease. After adjustment for conventional cardiovascular risk factors, the risk for ICVD was significantly associated with the presence of carotid plaque (hazard ratio, 1.49; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.05–2.14) and total plaque score (hazard ratio per 1-score increase, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.04–1.50). Further analysis showed that the multivariate-adjusted hazard ratio of ICVD associated with plaque in common carotid arteries was 1.90 (95% CI, 1.15–3.13) and that with plaque in bifurcations was 1.26 (95% CI, 0.86–1.85). The results of separate analyses for ischemic stroke and coronary heart disease paralleled those for ICVD. The addition of total plaque score to the risk prediction model resulted in a significant improvement in risk estimation when measured by net reclassification improvement index.

Conclusions

Carotid plaque adds significant additional information for predicting the risk for ICVD events in the Chinese population.

Section snippets

Study Population

The study population was composed of two cohorts in Beijing, one rural (Shijingshan district cohort) and one urban (Peking University community cohort).

The former was taken from the study population of the third survey of the People’s Republic of China/United States of America Collaborative Study of Cardiovascular & Cardiopulmonary Epidemiology in 1993 and 1994.10, 11 This cohort consisted of a cluster random sample of 2,313 participants from all 11 rural communities in Beijing’s Shijingshan

Baseline Characteristics

During a mean follow-up period of 4 years (12,901 person-years in total), there were 87 new cases of ischemic stroke (42 in men and 45 in women) and 57 of CHD (23 in men and 34 in women), and a total of 137 participants had new ICVD events (63 in men and 74 in women). The incidence rate was 6.7 per 1,000 person-years for ischemic stroke (8.0 in men and 5.9 in women), 4.4 per 1,000 person-years for CHD (4.4 in men and 4.4 in women), and 10.6 per 1,000 person-years for ICVD events (12.0 in men

Primary Findings

The present study demonstrated that the presence of carotid plaque was significantly associated with the subsequent incidence of ICVD events, and a dose-response relationship existed between risk for ICVD and TPS. The same findings was reported previously in only two large-scale and population-based prospective studies, one in the Netherlands and the other in the United States.5, 7, 8 In the Rotterdam Study, the age-adjusted and sex-adjusted HR of myocardial infarction was 2.45 (95% CI,

Conclusions

In our study, carotid plaque provided important additional information about future risk for ICVD events in the Chinese general population and represents a simple and inexpensive screening tool to estimate cardiovascular risk for preventive strategies. Plaque in the CCA may bear more clinical significance than that in the bifurcation in predicting subsequent ICVD risk.

Acknowledgment

We deeply appreciate the participation of our colleagues and especially the contribution of the research participants in these studies.

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