Publication:

Study of carotid intima media thickness as surrogate marker of endothelial dysfunction in early chronic kidney disease patients

Background Micro-albuminuria has been extensively regarded as a marker of generalized vascular endothelial impairment. Endothelial dysfunction is an early marker for atherosclerosis and can be detected before structural changes to the vessel wall.

Methods This case control study was carried out in the Department of Medicine, MGM Medical College and MY Hospital, Indore, India, from December 2017 to February 2019, with sample size of 100 including 50 cases and 50 controls.

Results In our study, mean CIMT of cases and controls was 0.83±0.10mm and 0.63±0.14mm in right respectively. Mean CIMT of cases and controls was 0.83±0.10 and 0.64±0.07mm in left side respectively. These results are suggestive that mean CIMT are significantly higher (p values <0.05 in each) in cases than controls. 90% of cases were in stage II of CKD and their mean CIMT was 0.83±0.09mm and 10% of cases were in stage I of CKD and their mean CIMT was 0.80±0.09mm and there were no significant difference in mean CIMT between CKD stage I and CKD stage II in cases. There were significant positive correlation between Mean CIMT and Age of cases (Pearson correlation=0.382, p-value 0.006).

Conclusions Increased CIMT was found in all the cases as compare to controls so, increased CIMT can be used as an early marker of atherosclerosis in early CKD patients. Further study in large number of subjects may help to confirm or exclude the findings.