Age and blood pressure are the primary determinants of arterial stiffness in healthy individuals, with distinct age and sex-related patterns for carotid versus carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity.
In apparently healthy population, both carotid and carotid-femoral PWV were influenced above all by age and blood pressure. Other established cardiovascular risk factors had a limited impact only on carotid-femoral PWV of older individuals. The age-related increase in carotid and carotid-femoral PWV seemed to follow different patterns; increase in carotid PWV showed age-sex interaction, being steeper in women, whereas increase in carotid-femoral PWV was more prominent in older individuals.
Kozàkovà et al. (Thu,) studied this question.