Background: Aortic and carotid stiffness are independent predictors of all cause, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular morbidity and mortality in several clinical conditions as well as in the general population.

Aim of the study: was to investigate the associations between non-invasively determined aortic and carotid artery stiffness with vestimates of absolute cardiovascular (CV) risk in healthy subjects and subjects with risk factors.

Materials: 139 subjects were recruited [104 with one or more CV risk factors (cases: 46 males, mean age 49 years), 35 healthy controls (16 males, mean age 43 years)]. Common carotid artery stiffness was investigated by an ultrasound system with wall track option (Aloka SSD-5500, Tokyo), providing a single point local wave speed (WS). Aortic stiffness was estimated by the carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) (Complior, Paris). Ten-year absolute CV risk was estimated using both the Framingham risk score (FRS) chart and the Edinburgh University Risk Chart (EURC, including echocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy).

Results: Cases had significantly (p<0.001) higher CF-PWV (10.5±2.2 vs 8.6±1.3 m/s), WS (7.6±1.4 vs 5.8±0.8 m/s), FRS (10.8±10.2 vs 3.1±3.1%), and EURC score (21.5±16 vs 6±5%). Significant positive correlations (p<0.001) were observed for CF-PWV and WS with FRS (r=0.56 and 0.52, respectively) and EURC score (r=0.64 and 0.61, respectively). When subdividing CF-PWV and WS in tertiles a significant intertertile difference was observed only for progressively increasing values of EURC score.

Conclusions: indices of subclinical cardiovascular involvement obtained by an integrated ultrasonographic investigation may help to promote CV risk stratification in clinical practice.