VASCULAR STIFFNESS AND EFFECTS OF DIETARY INTERVENTION

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DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from Investigator's Abstract) Vascular stiffening can be viewed as a measure of the "biologic aging" of the vessels and may be an early indication of subsequent atherosclerosis and/or hypertension. The study of vascular stiffness in human populations requires accurate and reproducible measures. There is currently no gold standard for measurement of vascular stiffness in epidemiological studies. The investigators propose to evaluate three different techniques, pulse wave velocity, ultrasound imaging and analysis of the pressure pulsation signal, with respect to their reproducibility and relationship to subclinical carotid atherosclerosis. Vascular stiffness will be evaluated in a variety of populations and a wide range of potential risk factors will be explored. A total of 1250 subjects will be studied. First, they will obtain vascular stiffness measures in populations undergoing carotid ultrasound in their department for whom a wealth of risk factor data are already available. These include 300 perimenopausal women, 300 postmenopausal women, and 200 middle-aged (40 - 70 years) African Americans and Caucasians. In addition, they will recruit 200 young adults (20 - 40 years), African American and Caucasian. Their preliminary data suggest that homocysteine may related to vascular stiffness, and this will be carefully evaluated in African American and Caucasian subjects. Finally, additional nutritional factors will be explored by performing vascular stiffness measures on 250 subjects from the Pittsburgh cohort of the INTERMAP study. This will allow the investigators to evaluate associations between vascular stiffness and detailed nutritional data that have been collected in a state-of-the-art manner. In summary, the investigators state that this study will provide a comprehensive overview of vascular stiffness measures in relationship to age, sex, race, menopausal status, hormone use, carotid atherosclerosis, echocardiographic measures, risk factors (including blood pressure, weight, body fat distribution, body fatness, lipids, diet, sodium and potassium excretion, vascular reactivity, psychosocial variables), and subclinical and clinical cardiovascular disease. They further state that conducting the study in one laboratory with careful, reproducible measures will allow a thorough evaluation of vascular stiffness, which is likely to be an important component of atherosclerosis and hypertension risk.