The University Key Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Computing of Anhui Province, Anqing Normal University, Anqing, China.
Health Management & Physical Examination Center, Xiangyang Central Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang, China.
Comput Biol Med. 2022 Dec;151(Pt B):106355. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.106355. Epub 2022 Nov 26.
Chronological age (CA) has been adopted as an important independent risk factor in cardiovascular risk assessment. However, different individuals with same CA may have distinct actual vascular aging due to various lifestyles. Therefore, it is difficult to fully describe the difference of actual vascular aging by CA.
This study proposes a new index vascular age (VA) to avoid the limitations of CA.
In this work, VA refers to the sum of CA and lifestyle impact (Age). Firstly, we take the pulse signal features and CA as independent variables and dependent variable respectively, and adopt cross validation to train Support Vector Regression model. Then we acquire the predicted chronological age (PA) of all subjects with the model. Secondly, we obtain the function model between CA and PA, and calculate the expectation of PA (ePA) for each subject. Simultaneously, we take the difference between PA and ePA as the estimated value of Age to further calculate VA. Finally, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of VA, we compare the correlations between CA, PA, VA and 8 objective indices such as augmentation index, pulse transit time, diastolic augmentation index, etc. RESULTS: In general, VA and PA are closer to these 8 objective indices than CA. Moreover, VA is also superior to PA in vascular aging evaluation.
The VA suggested in this study emphasizes the difference of vascular aging in same CA group, which can better reflect the actual vascular aging than CA and PA.
目前，在心血管风险评估中，通常采用年龄（chronological age，CA）作为一个重要的独立危险因素。然而，由于不同的生活方式，即使具有相同 CA 的个体，其实际血管年龄也可能存在明显差异。因此，CA 很难充分描述实际血管老化的差异。
本研究提出了一种新的血管年龄（vascular age，VA）指标，以避免 CA 的局限性。
在这项工作中，VA 是指 CA 与生活方式影响（Age）之和。首先，我们分别将脉搏信号特征和 CA 作为独立变量和因变量，采用交叉验证来训练支持向量回归模型。然后，我们使用模型获得所有受试者的预测 CA（predicted chronological age，PA）。其次，我们获得 CA 和 PA 之间的函数模型，并计算每个受试者的 PA 期望（expected PA，ePA）。同时，我们将 PA 与 ePA 的差值作为 Age 的估计值，以进一步计算 VA。最后，为了评估 VA 的有效性，我们比较了 CA、PA、VA 与 8 个客观指标（如增强指数、脉搏波传导时间、舒张增强指数等）之间的相关性。
总体而言，VA 和 PA 与这 8 个客观指标的相关性均比 CA 更密切。此外，VA 在血管老化评估方面也优于 PA。
本研究提出的 VA 强调了相同 CA 组内血管老化的差异，能比 CA 和 PA 更好地反映实际血管老化。
