scholarly journals Carotid artery temperature reduction with statin therapy in patients with familial hyperlipidemia syndromes

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
G Benetos ◽  
S Galanakos ◽  
I Koutagiar ◽  
I Skoumas ◽  
G Oikonomou ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) syndromes constitute an important risk factor for premature atherosclerosis. Microwave radiometry (MWR) assess non-invasively carotid artery temperatures reflecting inflammation. Recent data support that statin therapy, that constitutes the cornerstone for the treatment of FH, reduces systemic inflammation. Purpose To investigate the impact of statin therapy either with simvastatin or with combination simvastatin plus ezetimibe on carotid artery temperatures. Methods Consecutive patients with diagnosis of either heterozygous hypercholesterolemia (hFH) or combined hyperlipidemia (FCH) not under statin therapy for at least 6 months were included in the study. FH pts were assigned to either simvastatin 40 mg or simvastatin 40 mg plus ezetimibe 10mg according to the discretion of the physician. FH patients who refused statin therapy were used as control group for the assessment of statins effect. In all subjects, common carotid intima-media thickness (ccIMT) was measured in the last 2 cm of the far wall of both common carotids close to the carotid bifurcation and ΔT (maximum-minimum) temperature measurements were performed across each carotid during MWR evaluation. Examinations were performed at baseline and after 6 months. Blood's lipid profile was also obtained in all patients. Results In total 115 patients were included in the study. Of them 40 patients received simvastatin (19 hFH and 11 FCH), 41 simvastatin + ezetimibe (31hFH and 10 FCH) and 34 (21 hFH and 13 FCH) no statin. There was no difference at baseline in ccIMT and ΔT measurements between hFH and FCH patients (0.10±0.03 vs 0.10±0.02, p=0.74 and 0.88±0.38 vs 0.84±0.32, p=0.52, respectively). Patients who refused statin therapy did not show any reduction in ccIMT and ΔT measurements between baseline and follow up (ccIMT: 0.10±0.02 vs 0.09±0.02, p=0.06 and ΔT: 0.72±0.26 vs 0.70±0.26). In contrast, there was a significant reduction in ccIMT and ΔT for patients under both simvastatin (0.10±0.03 vs 0.09±0.01, p=0.004 for ccIMT and 0.83±0.34 vs 0.63±0.24, p=0.04 for ΔT) and simvastatin + ezetimibe therapy (0.11±0.03 vs 0.09±0.02, p<0.001 and 1.00±0.38 vs 0.69±0.23, p<0.001 for ΔT). Patients under combination therapy reduced more significantly their carotid artery temperatures compared to patients under simvastatin monotherapy or patients without statin (−0.31±0.46 vs −0.2±0.40 vs −0.01±0.37, ANOVA p=0.04, Figure 1). Conclusions Both simvastatin and simvastatin + ezetimibe therapy among the beneficial effect on IMT, reduced carotid wall inflammation in FH pts. Figure 1 Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (21) ◽  
pp. 5008
Author(s):  
Georgios Benetos ◽  
Spyros Galanakos ◽  
Iosif Koutagiar ◽  
Ioannis Skoumas ◽  
Georgios Oikonomou ◽  
...  

Background: Microwave radiometry (MWR) assesses non-invasive carotid artery temperatures reflecting inflammation. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the impact of hypolipidemic therapy either with simvastatin or with combination simvastatin plus ezetimibe on carotid artery temperatures of patients with familial hyperlipidemia syndromes (FHS). Methods: Consecutive patients with diagnosis of either familial heterozygous hypercholesterolemia (heFH) or familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCH) were included in the study. Patients were assigned to either simvastatin 40 mg or simvastatin 40 mg plus ezetimibe 10 mg, according to the discretion of the physician. FHS patients who refused statin therapy were used as a control group. Common carotid intima-media thickness (ccIMT) was measured and ΔΤ (maximum-minimum) temperature measurements were performed across each carotid during MWR evaluation. RESULTS: In total, 115 patients were included in the study. Of them, 40 patients received simvastatin (19 heFH and 21 FCH), 41 simvastatin + ezetimibe (31 heFH and 10 FCH), and 34 (21 heFH and 13 FCH) no statin. Carotid artery temperatures were significantly reduced at 6 months in FH patients who received hypolipidemic treatment (0.83 ± 0.34 versus 0.63 ± 0.24 oC, p = 0.004 for simvastatin, 1.00 ± 0.38 versus 0.69 ± 0.23 oC, p < 0.001 for simvastatin+ezetimibe), but no change was recorded in controls (0.72 ± 0.26 versus 0.70 ± 0.26 oC, p = 0.86). CONCLUSIONS: Hypolipidemic therapy reduced carotid temperatures in FHS patients.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (6) ◽  
pp. 1550-1553
Author(s):  
Rosana Manea ◽  
Bianca Elena Popovici ◽  
Carmen Daniela Neculoiu ◽  
Dan Minea ◽  
Alina Calin

Hypertension is a major risk factor for progression of the atherosclerotic process and for developing of degenerative cardiovascular diseases in adulthood. The aim of this study is to evaluate how the measurement of carotid intima - media thickness for prediction of essential hypertension in children can be used.The study group included 81 children and the control group 61 children, all aged between 5 - 17 years and 11 months old, and admitted in Children Hospital Brasov in the period of 2009 � 2014. The study protocol included: BMI, blood pressure and Doppler echography of the common carotid artery for each group. Mean age of the patients from the study group was 13.67 years, 43.20 % girls and 56.80 % boys, while in the control group, the mean age was 14.07 years, 54.10% girls and 45.90 % boys. 70.37% of the children from the study group presented obesity, while in the control group 40.98% were obese. The IMTC study group ranged from 0.52 - 0.69 mm and the limits of the normotensive subjects were 0.32 -0.54 mm. In both groups the obese patients were found to have increased carotid artery intima-media, which means that IMTC was positively correlated with BMI (p=0.000001).It is necessary to identify diagnostic methods easily applicable for children, allowing involvement of the characteristics of the arterial wall in the degenerative pathological processes. Increased intima-media ratio is positively correlated with high values of blood pressure.


Author(s):  
Reihaneh Mortazavi Ardestani ◽  
Masoud M. Ardestani

Background: Iron overload is caused early progression of atherosclerosis in beta thalassemia patients due to regular repeated blood transfusion. MRI T2* is a gold standard non-invasive method for detecting hepatic and cardiac iron overload. The aim of this study was the comparison of carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) in the patients and healthy control groups with Doppler ultrasound for early diagnosis of atherogenesis. Another purpose was to assess the relationship between CIMT and iron overload among patients. Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on twenty patients referred to the Sarvar clinic and twenty age- and sex-matched control group. The CIMT was measured with Color Doppler ultrasound in both groups. Then, MRI T2* results, demographic, and therapeutic information were extracted from their documents. Results: CIMT was insignificantly higher in the patients compared to the control group. For example, it was 0.49 ± 0.05 vs. 0.45 ± 0.03 (p = 0.009) for the right common carotid artery (RCCA) and 0.48 ± 0.06 vs. 0.46 ± 0.04 (p = 0.17) for the left common carotid artery (LCCA). There was no strong relationship between CIMT and age (p = 0.09 for RCCA, p = 0.00 for LCCA), sex, chelation type (for example, p = 0.51 for RCCA with Desferal and p = 0.91 for LCCA with Desferal), age at diagnosis, age at the beginning on transfusion (p = 0.49 for RCCA, p = 0.20 for LCCA), age at the start of chelator (p = 0.74 for RCCA, p = 0.78 for LCCA), and hepatic and cardiac iron overload. Conclusion: Preventive and curative methods should be planned to cease its progression. Furthermore, early initiation of chelator drugs with better efficacy and compliance may reverse the hepatotoxic and adverse myocardial effects of excessive iron.


Circulation ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 118 (suppl_18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory W Evans ◽  
Mike K Palmer ◽  
Daniel H O’Leary ◽  
John R Crouse ◽  
Michiel L Bots ◽  
...  

Carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) assessed by B-mode ultrasound is an accepted marker for subclinical atherosclerosis commonly used in clinical trials. Their sample size and power calculations apply 2-sample independent t-tests and within group variance in progression rates from the literature. However, this approach obscures the impact of differences in study designs including length of follow-up and differences in the number of and interval between ultrasound scans. These effects can be assessed using common sample size formula for longitudinal models, but this approach requires decomposition of the total variance into between and within subject components that have not generally been reported in the literature. Here, we derive these variance components for the Measuring Effects on intima-media Thickness: an Evaluation of Rosuvastatin (METEOR) study, a randomized, double-blind trial that demonstrated treatment with 40 mg rosuvastatin significantly slowed CIMT progression in middle-aged patients with a low Framingham risk of coronary heart disease and subclinical atherosclerosis (baseline maximum CIMT ≥1.2-<3.5mm). We examined the impact of differing follow-up periods, use of intermediate scans, and use of duplicate scans using both sample size calculations and actual analyses based on subsets of the METEOR data. Reductions in study length or number of scans result in increased variances and larger sample sizes to detect a given treatment effect. Table shows the impact of duplicate scans at baseline and end of the 2-year study, with and without intermediate scans performed every 6 months, on the sample size required to detect a treatment effect of 0.012 mm/year. These results underscore the importance of considering the number and spacing of ultrasound exams explicitly during study design, and suggest that reductions in scanning frequency may seriously erode study power and/or increase costs by requiring recruitment of additional subjects.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parvin Tajik ◽  
Rudy Meijer ◽  
Raphaël Duivenvoorden ◽  
Sanne AE Peters ◽  
John J Kastelein ◽  
...  

Background: Small autopsy studies and clinical practice indicated that carotid atherosclerosis develops in an asymmetrical helical pattern coinciding with regions of low shear stress. We investigated the distribution of carotid atherosclerosis as determined by maximum carotid intima-⊟media thickness (CIMT), to assess if we could confirm this atherosclerotic configuration across various populations with different cardiovascular risk. Methods and results: We used the individual baseline CIMT data from 3364 subjects from four recent international multicentre randomized controlled trials in which the carotid artery was systematically examined using the same ultrasound protocol and method to quantify CIMT. For each subject, circumferential information on the maximum CIMT of the left and right carotid arteries was obtained for the common carotid, bifurcation, and internal carotid artery segments. In each segment (common, bifurcation, internal), mixed modelling was used to study the differences in CIMT between angles, sides, gender, age, race, and studies. Each segment showed a different circumferential CIMT pattern. In all segments there were statistically significant differences between maximum CIMT across circumferential angles ( p < 0.001); on average CIMT was highest in the posteromedial wall of the bifurcation and internal carotid segments and in the anterolateral wall of the common carotid segment. This asymmetric circumferential pattern was found to be identical in men and women, in young and old age, in different race groups, and across the studies. Conclusions: We confirmed the asymmetrical helix-like distribution of atherosclerosis in the carotid arteries and expand the evidence by showing that the atherosclerotic configuration is similar across populations with different vascular risks and across gender, age, and race. This has implications for future design of carotid ultrasound studies, as the angle of insonation is an important predictor of maximum CIMT.


2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. E39-45
Author(s):  
Anally J. Soto-García ◽  
Guillermo Elizondo-Riojas ◽  
Rene Rodriguez-Gutiérrez ◽  
Leonardo G. Mancillas-Adame ◽  
J. Gerardo González-González

Purpose: The association between subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) and cardiovascular risk, particularly with a TSH <10 µIU/ml, remains controversial. The objective of our study was to assess the association between SCH and cardiovascular risk through carotid intima-media thickness, and alternatively, to evaluate its change after treatment with levothyroxine. Methods: A total of 54 individuals were included in the study: 18 with SCH; 18 with overt hypothyroidism (OH); and 18 healthy controls (HC). The carotid intima-media thickness was measured in each group. In SCH, follow-up was performed at three and six months after the start of levothyroxine treatment. Results: The mean age of the total population at baseline was 35.8 years. The median TSH in SCH was 6.15 µIU/ml. The carotid intima-media thickness (mean and standard deviation) was greater in SCH in comparison to the HC group: right common carotid artery (RCCA), 0.486 ± 0.106 mm and 0.413 ± 0.075 mm in SCH and HC, respectively, p=0.01 and left common carotid artery (LCCA), 0.511 ± 0.144 mm and 0.427 mm ± 0.090 in SCH and HC, respectively, p=0.03). In patients with SCH, there was a decrease in the carotid intima-media thickness after treatment with levothyroxine (RCCA and LCCA, p <0.05 at three and six months). Conclusions: There was an association between increased carotid intima-media thickness in patients with SCH in comparison with HC, even with a TSH <10 µIU/ml. The increase was reversed with levothyroxine therapy. The association of this increased thickness with important cardiovascular outcomes remains uncertain and should be evaluated in future studies.


Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (7) ◽  
pp. 621-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Willeit ◽  
Lena Tschiderer ◽  
Elias Allara ◽  
Kathrin Reuber ◽  
Lisa Seekircher ◽  
...  

Background: To quantify the association between effects of interventions on carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) progression and their effects on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Methods: We systematically collated data from randomized, controlled trials. cIMT was assessed as the mean value at the common-carotid-artery; if unavailable, the maximum value at the common-carotid-artery or other cIMT measures were used. The primary outcome was a combined CVD end point defined as myocardial infarction, stroke, revascularization procedures, or fatal CVD. We estimated intervention effects on cIMT progression and incident CVD for each trial, before relating the 2 using a Bayesian meta-regression approach. Results: We analyzed data of 119 randomized, controlled trials involving 100 667 patients (mean age 62 years, 42% female). Over an average follow-up of 3.7 years, 12 038 patients developed the combined CVD end point. Across all interventions, each 10 μm/y reduction of cIMT progression resulted in a relative risk for CVD of 0.91 (95% Credible Interval, 0.87–0.94), with an additional relative risk for CVD of 0.92 (0.87–0.97) being achieved independent of cIMT progression. Taken together, we estimated that interventions reducing cIMT progression by 10, 20, 30, or 40 μm/y would yield relative risks of 0.84 (0.75–0.93), 0.76 (0.67–0.85), 0.69 (0.59–0.79), or 0.63 (0.52–0.74), respectively. Results were similar when grouping trials by type of intervention, time of conduct, time to ultrasound follow-up, availability of individual-participant data, primary versus secondary prevention trials, type of cIMT measurement, and proportion of female patients. Conclusions: The extent of intervention effects on cIMT progression predicted the degree of CVD risk reduction. This provides a missing link supporting the usefulness of cIMT progression as a surrogate marker for CVD risk in clinical trials.


Stroke ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshihiro Kokubo ◽  
Makoto Watanabe ◽  
Aya Higashiyama ◽  
Yoko M. Nakao ◽  
Misa Takegami ◽  
...  

Introduction: Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) is increasingly used as a subclinical marker of cardiovascular disease. However, few studies have examined the association between IMT and incident coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke in non-Westerners. We assessed the hypothesis that carotid atherosclerosis is a predictor of CHD and stroke events in a general urban Japanese population. Methods: We studied 4,751 Japanese (2181 men and 2570 women, mean age 59.8 years, without stroke or CHD at the baseline) who completed a baseline survey and carotid atherosclerosis in the Suita Study, and were then followed for an average of 12.6 years. Carotid atherosclerosis was evaluated by high-resolution ultrasonography with atherosclerotic indexes of IMT in the common carotid artery (CCA) and the carotid artery bulb. Mean IMT was defined as the mean of the IMT of the proximal and distal walls for both sides of the CCA at a point 10 mm proximal to the beginning of the dilation of each carotid artery bulb. Max-CCA and Max-Bulb were defined as the maximum IMT in the CCA and bulb areas, respectively. We used adjusted Cox proportional-hazards models to compare the risk of CHD and stroke by use of mean and maximum carotid IMT in the CCA and bulb areas. Results: During the follow-up, we documented 145 cerebral infarctions, 58 hemorrhagic strokes, 20 unclassified strokes, and 159 CHD. The adjusted hazard ratios (HRs; 95% confidence intervals [CI], P for trend [P trend]) in the fourth quartile (≥ 0.95 mm) of the mean IMT for strokes, cerebral infarction, and CHD were 3.13 (1.48-6.63, P trend = 0.002), 3.34 (1.33-8.37, P trend = 0.002), and 1.93 (0.96-3.88, P trend <0.0001), respectively, compared with the first quartile (<0.775 mm). The adjusted HRs (95% CI) in the fourth quartiles of Max-CCA (≥1.10 mm) and Max-BIF (≥1.55 mm) were 2.48 (1.10-5.62, P trend = 0.07) and 3.28 (1.40-7.69, P trend <0.0001) in stroke, 1.87 (0.75-4.659, P trend = 0.07) and 2.83 (1.05-7.63, P trend = 0.005) in cerebral infarction, and 3.07 (1.18-8.04, P trend <0.0001) and 6.01 (2.02-17.9, P trend <0.0001) in CHD, respectively, compared with the first quartiles (<0.9 mm). Conclusions: Carotid IMT, especially Max-BIF was a strong predictor of stroke, cerebral infarction, and CHD in a Japanese urban general population.


Author(s):  
Anally Soto-García ◽  
Guillermo Elizondo-Riojas ◽  
Rene Rodriguez-Gutiérrez ◽  
Leonardo Mancillas-Adame ◽  
Jose Gerardo Gonzalez-Gonzalez

Background: The association between subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) and cardiovascular risk, particularly with a TSH <10µIU/ml, remains controversial. The objective of our study was to assess the association between SCH and cardiovascular risk through carotid intima-media thickness, and alternatively, to evaluate its change after treatment with levothyroxine. Methods: A total of 54 individuals were included in the study, 18 with SCH, 18 with overt hypothyroidism (OH), and 18 healthy controls (HC). The carotid intima-media thickness was measured in each group. In SCH, follow-up was performed at three and six months after the start of levothyroxine. Results: The mean age of the total population at baseline was 35.8 years. The median TSH in SCH was 6.15 µIU/ml. The carotid intima-media thickness was greater in SCH in comparison to the HC group (Right common carotid artery [RCCA, mm]: 0.486 ± 0.106 and 0.413 ± 0.075 in SCH and HC, respectively, p=0.01. Left common carotid artery [LCCA, mm]: 0.511±0.144 and 0.427±0.090 in SCH and HC, respectively, p=0.03). In patients with SCH, there was a decrease in the carotid intima-media thickness after treatment with levothyroxine (RCCA and LCCA p <0.05 at 3 and 6 months). Conclusions: There is an association between an increase in the carotid intima-media thickness in patients with SCH in comparison to HC, even with a TSH <10 µIU/ml. The increase reversed with levothyroxine therapy. Its association with important cardiovascular outcomes remains uncertain and should be evaluated in future studies.


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