Cardiovascular diseases are important cause of morbidity in children with chronic kidney disease, necessitating the search of methods for their early detection, like arterial stiffness measurement. Studies in adults have demonstrated the connection of mildly decreased kidney function or even normal values of kidney function markers to pulse wave velocity (PWV), a measure of arterial stiffness and predictor of cardiovascular events. The aim of our study was to evaluate the relation between PWV and kidney markers, serum cystatin C, serum creatinine and microalbuminuria in children and adolescents.

Material and methods:

The following data has been collected retrospectively for the purpose of this study: subject’s age, height, weight, body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure (SP), diastolic blood pressure (DP), PWV, serum cystatin C, creatinine and microalbuminuria. 191 children and adolescent were included. PWV has been measured using applanation tonometry (SphygmoCor, SCOR-Vx, Australia). SPSS Statistics (IBM, version 22) has been used for statistical analyses.

Results:

PWV significantly correlated with age (<0.001), height (P<0.001), weight (p=0.001), SP (p<0.001), DP (p<0.001), but not with BMI (p=0.134), serum cystatin C (p=0.547), serum creatinine (p=0.179) and microalbuminuria (p=0.055). In multiple regression analysis with PWV as dependent variable, only age and DP were found statistically significant. Pearson correlation test implied a possible connection of PWV with microalbuminuria, as almost reaching statistical significance.

Conclusions:

We were not able to demonstrate a connection between PWV and markers of kidney function in children, although correlation between PWV and microalbuminuria could be promising. The lack of association requires further prospective research.