ARTERIAL STIFFNESS IN A RURAL POPULATION OF CHINA

Previous studies show that cf-PWV can predict cardiovascular events and mortality in both the general population and the patients with various diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus and end-stage renal disease. Current hypertension guidelines recommend the use of cf-PWV for the assessment of arterial stiffness and cardiovascular risk. It is of note that brachial-ankle PWV(ba-PWV) has been criticized due to the involvement of muscular arteries and the estimation of wave path from body height instead of real measurement. But ba-PWV is still extensively beingused in China for some reasons. For example, exposure of inguinal region could be ethically unacceptable for a majority of patients. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is 1) to measure the index of arterial stiffness, especially cf-PWV, in a rural population of China; 2) to assess the correlation between different measures of arterial stiffness.