Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality for patients with end-stage renal disease(ESRD) [1]. Undoubtedly, ESRD is associated with a higher prevalence of several traditional and uraemia-related risk factors for atherogenesis, such as hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, diabetes mellitus, anaemia and increased oxidative stress. However, the combination of the known risk factors accounts only partly for the particularly increased burden of atherosclerotic disease in haemodialysis (HD) patients, indicating that other factors yet to be defined are also probably triggered in this patient...

SubjectsBetween January and April 2001, 112 adult patients on chronic maintenance HD (60 male, mean age 59 years, range 2586 years) from the dialysis unit of the University Department of Nephrology at Hippokration General Hospital and from one affiliated outpatient dialysis center consecutively entered the study. All patients had been stabilized on renal replacement therapy for > 3 months (mean HD duration 74 months, range 5372 months) and were clinically stable and free of active infection. Chronic renal failure was attributed to glomerulonephritis in 46...

The somatometric, haemodymnamic and biochemical characteristics, as well as the risk factors for atherosclerosis of controls and HD patients are shown in Table 1. Triglycerides were significantly increased and HDL was significantly decreased in HD patients compared with control subjects. Thus, HD patients showed, as expected, a lipid profile different from that of healthy normotensive controls. In addition, systolic BP was elevated in HD patients whereas diastolic BP did not differ significantly between the two groups. BMI and smoking status were also similar in the...

In accordance with previous reports, the present study demonstrated a significant association between IMT and CRP values (5-7). In addition, CRP was found to be a significant contributor to plaque score on both univariate and multivariate analysis, indicating that CRP is a valuable surrogate marker for atherosclerotic vascular damage. An interesting findingin the present study was the highly significant association observed between carotid IMT and serum ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 levels. Multivariate analysis showed that ICAM-1 levels were a strong independent correlate of IMT, whereas CRP...

1) Ma KW, Greene EL, Raij L. Cardiovascular risk factors in chronic renal failure and hemodialysis populations. Am J Kidney Dis 1992; 19: 5055132) Persson J, Blann AD, McCollum CN. Circulating endothelial cell /leukocyte adhesion molecules in atherosclerosis. ThrombHaemost 1994; 72: 1511543) Papagianni A, Alexopoulos E, Giamalis P et al. Circulating levels of ICAM-1, VCAM-1 and MCP-1 are increased in haemodialysis patients. Association with inflammation, dys-lipidaemia and vascular events. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2002; 17: 4354414)Aminbakhsh A, Mancini GB. Carotid intima media thickness measurements. What defines...

Michalis Kalovoulos, MDDepartment of RadiologyHippokration General Hospital50 Papanastasiou Str54642 ThessalonikiGreeceTel/Fax: +3 231 0 892382E-mail: [email protected]