Carotid Intima Media Thickness (Cimt) And Cardivascular Risk Assesment: Analysis Of Qatar Biobank Data

Abstract

Background: Ultra-sonographic measurement of Carotid Intima Media Thickness (CIMT) has been stated as a technique to detect the early stages of atherosclerosis. CIMT is a newly established, safe, noninvasive and cost effective subclinical atherosclerosis marker that have been associated with identifying any increased cardiovascular risk even in subjects with low and intermediate risk. This study aimed to explore different socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, clinical measurements and biomedical laboratory markers as potential predictors of CIMT. Methods: In addition to descriptive exploratory analysis to analyze the baseline characteristics of the study risk groups, further appropriate univariate regression models were performed for all lifestyle factors, clinical measurements and biomedical laboratory markers as potential predictors of CIMT. This initial univariate analysis was followed by a purposeful selection multivariate regression analysis technique and goodness of fit study of the fitted model. Results: The study population was 1425 participants having CIMT values recorded, of which 960 (67.4%) had CIMT below 75th percentile for their gender and age and were hence termed as per evidence as low risk for CVD. The rest of the population 465 (32.6%) were having CIMT above 75th percentile and were termed as high risk for CVD. The age groups 18 – 35, >35 – 55 and >55 had 28.7 %, 39.9 5 , 48.7% of them with high risk level of CIMT respectively. 861 of the population were females versus 564 males. 36.8% of the females were High risk while only 26.2 % of the men were high risk.. The main effects model was fitted with five main predictors; systolic blood pressure, C-reactive protein (CRP), gender, waist and high density lipoprotein (HDL) and interactions between HDL and systolic blood pressure and Waist. Conclusion: In this study we found significant association between CIMT and various CVD risk factors such as age, gender, hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, BMI, lipids profile. These findings are consistent with the existing literature on CIMT and provide an indirect validation of our data. This study results can permit for good comparative effort with current and future studies in Middle East. Moreover, the study can be used to develop a simple, noninvasive yet sensitive risk-prediction tool to identify the population at risk of CVD, which is a powerful public health strategy that can be more generalized to healthcare service.