Brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity and chronic kidney disease as a prognostic impact in hypertension

(hcPWV), heart-femoral PWV (hfPWV), femoral-ankle PWV (faPWV) using carotid and femoral sensor of form PWV/ABI. Therefore we examined prognostic impact of each regional PWV on stroke and cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared with baPWV in the cohort study of hypertensive patients. Methods: This study included 387 patients with essential hypertension (male/female Z 218/169, mean age 61.1 11.8, mean follow period 43months) whose baand regional PWV could be measured from October, 2000 to December, 2004. We set up stroke (n Z 20) and CVD (n Z 21) as a primary end point by the questionnaire. We classified the participants by the highest quartile of each PWV; high baPWV group, high hcPWV, high hfPWV and high faPWV; by the lowest quartile of ABI as low ABI group. Results: There was a significant correlation between baPWV and regional PWV; faPWV (r Z 0.560), hcPWV (r Z 0.253) and hfPWV (r Z 0.506). By Kaplan-Meier analysis, only high baPWV group showed the prognostic impact of stroke and CVD (p Z 0.0099) but not high faPWV (p Z 0.6982), high hcPWV (p Z 0.5740), high hfPWV (p Z 0.0773) and low ABI group (p Z 0.8008). Only low ABI group showed the prognostic impact on mortality (p Z 0.0223), high baPWV on stroke (p Z 0.0155) and high hcPWV on CVD (p Z 0.0382). Conclusion: As a further, larger, multicenter cohort study is needed, our study indicated that higher level of baPWV a might be a risk factor of stroke and CVD, but prognostic impact of regional PWV is not still unclear in hypertension.