RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Secular trends in echocardiographic left ventricular mass in the community: the Framingham Heart Study
JF Heart
JO Heart
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Cardiovascular Society
SP 1693
OP 1698
DO 10.1136/heartjnl-2013-304600
VO 99
IS 22
A1 Bernhard M Kaess
A1 Philimon Gona
A1 Martin G Larson
A1 Susan Cheng
A1 Jayashree Aragam
A1 Satish Kenchaiah
A1 Emelia J Benjamin
A1 Ramachandran S Vasan
YR 2013
UL http://heart.bmj.com/content/99/22/1693.abstract
AB Objective To investigate secular trends in echocardiographically determined left ventricular mass (LVM). Design, setting and participants Longitudinal community-based cohort study in Framingham, Massachussetts. LVM was calculated from routine echocardiography in 4320 participants (52% women) of the Framingham offspring cohort at examination cycles 4 (1987–1991), 5 (1991–1995), 6 (1995–1998) and 8 (2005–2008), totalling 13 971 person-observations. Main outcome measures Sex-specific trends in mean LVM (and its components, LV diastolic diameter (LVDD) and LV wall thickness (LVWT)), and LVM indexed to body surface area (BSA). Results In men, age-adjusted LVM modestly increased from examination 4 to 8 (192 g to 198 g, p-trend=0.0005), whereas, in women it decreased from 147 g at examination 4 to 140 g at examination 8 (p-trend<0.0001). The trend for increasing LVM in men tracked with an increasing LVDD (p-trend=0.0002), whereas the decline in LVM in women was accompanied by a decrease in LVWT (p-trend<0.0001). Indexing LVM to BSA abolished the increasing trend in men (p-trend=0.49), whereas, the decreasing trend in women was maintained. Conclusions In our longitudinal analysis of a large community-based sample spanning two decades, we observed sex-related differences in trends in LVM, with a modest increase of LVM in men (likely attributable to increasing body size), but a decrease in women. Additional studies are warranted to elucidate the basis for these sex-related differences.