Intima-media thickness of lower-limb arteries associated with fasting and post-challenge plasma glucose levels.

Aim: Atherosclerosis is a systemic disease with focal cardiovascular events. Although the accelerated development of peripheral arterial disease in diabetic patients is well known, the pathogenic mechanism of site-specific susceptibility to glycemia is uncertain.

Objective: To investigate the association of fasting and post-challenge glucose levels with intima-media thickness (IMT) at different arterial sites.

Methods: Forty consecutive middle-aged volunteers aged 37 to 53 years were recruited to define the association of IMT with cardiovascular risk factors at 12 carotid and 6 lower-limb arterial sites. A linear mixed model was used to regress the primary outcome measures, which were repeated measures of IMT at multiple arterial sites (18 sites per participant), on fixed-effect predictors of various conventional cardiovascular risk factors, while accounting for the interdependence of repeated measures taken from the same participant with unstructured covariance.

Results: Carotid IMTs were associated independently with waist circumference and systolic blood pressure, whereas lower-limb IMTs were associated with waist circumference, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), glycated hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C), and fasting and 2-hour post-challenge plasma glucose levels; these associations were stronger in overall arteries. Independent associations of ALT and smoking with IMT appeared only in overall arteries.

Conclusion: In a middle-aged, nonclinical sample, lower-limb but not carotid IMTs are associated independently with HbA1C, and fasting and 2-hour post-challenge plasma glucose levels.