Increased arterial stiffness in familial combined hyperlipidemia.

Objective: The current study was conducted to investigate whether greater arterial stiffening is already present in normolipidemic relatives of patients with familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCHL), as compared with healthy controls, and to establish the factors that are associated with arterial stiffness in comparison with markers of atherosclerosis.

Methods: Seventy-seven FCHL patients, 121 normolipidemic relatives and 72 spouses (controls) underwent ultrasound examination of the common carotid artery to determine the presence of plaques and the degree of arterial stiffness, expressed as stiffness index alpha.

Results: Age-adjusted and sex-adjusted analyses revealed that the arterial stiffness index alpha and prevalence of plaques were higher in normolipidemic relatives when compared with spouses, but lower than in FCHL patients (P<0.

Non-invasive ultrasound in arterial wall dynamics in humans: what have we learned and what remains to be solved.

In the past decades, non-invasive vascular ultrasound has substantially improved our insights into artery wall dynamics under normal circumstances and in disease. Although we have learned a lot, the methods in use are subject to improvement. In this review, we discuss the most important achievements in non-invasive assessment of dynamic artery wall properties in humans with emphasis on the clinical relevance of the observations.

Simultaneous assessment of diameter and pressure waveforms in the carotid artery.

Simultaneous assessment of diameter and pressure waveforms allows the calculation of the incremental compliance, distensibility, pulse wave velocity and elastic modulus as function of the distending pressure. However, the waveforms must be obtained at the same position and acquired and processed with the same filter characteristics to circumvent possible temporal and spatial changes in amplitude and phase. In this paper, arterial diameter waveforms are assessed by means of ultrasound (US) and converted to pressure using an empirically derived exponential relationship between pressure and arterial cross-section.

Assessment of spatial inhomogeneities in intima media thickness along an arterial segment using its dynamic behavior.

To assess locally deviating structural and mechanical properties of arterial walls, the spatial variance in end-diastolic intima media thickness (IMT) and the change in IMT during the cardiac cycle (DeltaIMT) were determined along a short segment of the common carotid artery (15.86 mm), at 16 positions simultaneously. Intrasubject spatial inhomogeneities along the artery were revealed by a spatial variance significantly larger than the temporal variance over several beats.