Do patients with SLE have altered macrovascular damage markers compared to healthy controls when assessed by combined oscillometry and carotid ultrasound?
Combined evaluation using oscillometry and carotid ultrasound detects increased carotid pulsatility and resistance in SLE patients, which may help identify subclinical organ damage and improve cardiovascular risk classification.
OBJECTIVES: To assess for the first time a combination of new and established markers of macrovascular damage in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) using oscillometry and greyscale/colour Doppler ultrasound (GSUS/CDUS) and, additionally, to explore associations of these markers with traditional cardiovascular (CV) risk factors and patient and disease characteristics. METHODS: CDUS was used to assess arterial compliance markers, such as the Resistance-Index (RI) and Pulsatility-Index (PI) of the common (CCA) and internal carotid artery (ICA) in SLE patients and healthy controls. Carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT), atherosclerotic plaque and total calcification area were evaluated by GSUS. Aortic stiffness was measured by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV). RESULTS: 0.018). cIMT and cfPWV both showed positive correlations with age (p<0.001) and mean arterial pressure (p<0.001), and inverse correlations with estimated glomerular filtration rate (both p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: In the first study of CV surrogate markers in SLE combining oscillometry and carotid CDUS/GSUS, patients showed increased carotid pulsatility and resistance compared with controls. Furthermore, several patient-related and disease-related factors were identified as angiopathy predictors. These results suggest that combined evaluation of CV surrogate markers may help detect subclinical organ damage and improve CV-risk classification in SLE.
Triantafyllias et al. (Wed,) studied this question.