2009 Southern Regional Meeting Abstracts

Purpose of Study: There are limited data on the role of systemic inflammation as an early marker of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in African Americans despite the higher disease burden and mortality rates in this population. We investigated the relation of C-reactive protein (CRP) to ankle-brachial index (ABI) defined peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in the population-based cohort of the Jackson Heart Study.
Methods Used: We measured ankle and brachial blood pressures (BP) on participants of the Jackson Heart Study during the first cycle between 2000 and 2004. Right and left ABI were defined as the ratio of the mean right arm BP to the mean right leg BP and the ratio of the mean left arm BP to the mean left leg BP respectively. The lower of the right and left ABI was used in this analysis. PAD was defined as an ABI < 0.9. We performed logistic regression to relate CRP to PAD adjusting for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure, diabetes, total/HDL cholesterol, smoking and antihypertensive therapy.
Summary of Results: The study cohort consisted of 4,442 participants (mean age 54±13 years, 64% women). There were high rates of obesity (52.6%), diabetes (17.5%) and hypertension (61.7%). Among study participants, 6.6% met criteria for PAD. CRP was significantly related to PAD both in the age-sex adjusted model (p = 0.006) and multivariable adjusted model (p = 0.002).
Conclusions: In this study investigating the relation of CRP to PAD in a population-based cohort of middle-aged African Americans, we found that CRP was significantly related to PAD adjusting for traditional cardiovascular risk factors.