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Cardio-ankle vascular index: a new marker for vascular health evaluation (experience from China)

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 29, page 136 (2015)Cite this article

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Over the past several decades, because of their high mortality and morbidity, coronary heart disease, stroke, atherosclerotic nephropathy and peripheral vascular disease have been hot topics of discussion in world government and academic circles. With increasing knowledge about these diseases, we now know that the clinical progression of disease across the human arterial tree is the core reason behind various important organ dysfunctions (above-mentioned). Therefore, early vascular disease detection and evaluation as well as vascular medicine has emerged as a new academic field. Since 1997, many studies have been completed and published on arterial stiffness using pulse wave velocity (PWV) measurement in hypertensive patients as well as in patients with other risk factors, and PWV has been established as a simple and useful index for evaluating vascular risk in routine practice.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 In June 2004, the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China approved a project to popularize the early diagnosis of vascular disease (Chinese vascular health project) as one of the national 10-year health plans. In 2005, Chinese guidelines for early vascular disease detection (first report) using PWV, carotid intima-media thickness, ankle brachial index and other noninvasive parameters were published. Over the years from 2004 to 2010 we have spread this technology to medical institutions across cities and counties all over our country, and in 2008, through a joint session named China-US vascular forum in American Society of Hypertension meeting, introduced Chinese experience to the world. We have used PWV as the indicator of arterial function in different populations, such as among the monks at Wutai Mountain, and found that a vegetarian diet can reduce arterial stiffness.7,8

In 2006, we began to study the cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) as a new marker of vascular health. Recently, our research found that CAVI was closely related to arterial damage in hypertensive, diabetes and lipid disorder patients, and, because of its blood pressure-independent feature, would be a useful tool for vascular health screening in patients with metabolic syndrome.9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 This study revealed that CAVI was closely related to lipid levels in hypertensive patients; the severity of lipid level would affect the CAVI result. A large-scale follow-up trial named BEST (Bejing Evaluation of vaScular helath sTudy) is in progress, which may yield the predictive value of those markers.

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  1. Department of vascular medicine, Peking University Shougang Hospital, Beijing, PR China

    H Wang

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Wang, H. Cardio-ankle vascular index: a new marker for vascular health evaluation (experience from China). J Hum Hypertens 29, 136 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/jhh.2014.68

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