Pulse-wave velocity in retinal arteries of healthy volunteers
Résumé
Background/aims: Pulse wave velocity (PWV) in large vessels has been extensively used in clinical practice as an indirect measure of arterial stiffness and an indicator of cardiovascular risk factors. Arterial stiffness increases with age and in coronary arterial disease. An in-vivo clinical method to characterize arterial stiffness of the central microcirculation was developed. Methods: Time dependent alterations of retinal vessel diameter were examined by the Dynamic Vessel Analyzer in a randomly chosen eye of 10 young 26.0(23.5 ï 27.0) years old [median(1.quartile ¬ï 3.quartile)] and 10 aged 67.0(61.3 ¬ï 69.5) years old healthy volunteers. Two segments of a retinal artery were measured simultaneously. The distance between those segments was measured using retinal photographs. The data was filtered and analyzed using methods of signal analysis in order to calculate PWV in the assessed retinal artery (rPWV). Results: rPWV differed significantly between young: 21.5(17.9 ï 34.6) mm/s and aged volunteers: 243.8(186.1 ï 347.7) mm/s (P=0.0001, Mann-Whitney test with Bonferroni correction). Conclusions: This study demonstrates higher retinal PWV in elderly. Therefore our measure resembles large artery PWV. This suggests that dynamic in-vivo imaging of the central microcirculation allows to measure local microvascular stiffness in a commercially available medical device.
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