Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution and Health Assessment Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Food, Nutrition and Health, Department of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology School of Public Health Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou China.
Division of Chronic Disease Research Across the Lifecourse Department of Population Medicine Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute Boston MA.
J Am Heart Assoc. 2020 Apr 7;9(7):e014654. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.119.014654. Epub 2020 Apr 4.
Background Retinal arteriolar narrowing and venular widening has been widely suggested to be associated with subclinical changes in cardiac structure. The novel retinal vascular geometric indices might reflect more comprehensive information on microvasculature other than vascular caliber alone. However, the association between suboptimal retinal vascular geometry and cardiac structural alteration has not been studied. Methods and Results We recruited 50 participants without cardiovascular disease from the Cardiac Aging Study conducted between 2014 and 2016. We performed transthoracic echocardiography imaging to measure cardiac structure indices such as left ventricular internal diameter end diastole index, left ventricular internal diameter end systole index, left ventricular mass index, and left atrial volume index, and retinal imaging to measure retinal vascular geometric indices including branching angle, curvature tortuosity, and fractal dimension. We applied multiple linear regressions to examine associations between indices of cardiac structure and retinal vascular geometry, adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, mean blood pressure, and comorbidity. The average age of all participants was 62.54 years old and slightly more than half were male (27; 54%). Each unit increase in a set of cardiac structure indices was associated with larger retinal arteriolar branching angle (β and 95% CI: for left ventricular internal diameter end systole index, 26.93°; 6.00-47.86; for left ventricular internal diameter end diastole index, 17.86°; 1.61-34.11; for left ventricular mass index, 0.39°; 0.10-0.67; for left atrial volume index, 0.91°; 0.24-1.58). Conclusions Adverse retinal arteriolar geometric morphology mirrored suboptimal cardiac structural alteration.
视网膜小动脉变窄和小静脉变宽已被广泛认为与心脏结构的亚临床变化有关。新型视网膜血管几何指标可能反映的血管口径以外的微血管更全面的信息。然而，亚优化的视网膜血管几何结构和心脏结构改变之间的关系尚未得到研究。
我们从 2014 年至 2016 年进行的心脏老化研究中招募了 50 名无心血管疾病的参与者。我们进行了经胸超声心动图成像，以测量心脏结构指数，如左心室内径舒张末期指数、左心室内径收缩末期指数、左心室质量指数和左心房容积指数，并进行视网膜成像以测量视网膜血管几何指数，包括分支角、曲率扭曲和分形维数。我们应用多元线性回归来检查心脏结构指数和视网膜血管几何指数之间的关联，调整年龄、性别、体重指数、平均血压和合并症。所有参与者的平均年龄为 62.54 岁，略多于一半为男性（27 名；54%）。一组心脏结构指数每增加一个单位，视网膜小动脉分支角就会增大（β 和 95%CI：左心室内径收缩末期指数，26.93°；6.00-47.86；左心室内径舒张末期指数，17.86°；1.61-34.11；左心室质量指数，0.39°；0.10-0.67；左心房容积指数，0.91°；0.24-1.58）。
不良的视网膜小动脉几何形态反映了亚优化的心脏结构改变。
