Carotid atherosclerosis and arterial peripheral pulse wave velocity in cerebral thrombosis

Stiffening and thickening of the arterial walls are two important components of atherosclerosis. A better understanding of the relationship between stiffening and thickening of the large arteries might lead to optimal strategies for the prevention of cerebrovascular disease. However, there have been few investigations of the correlation between carotid artery wall thickening and arterial stiffness. In this study, we investigated the relationship between arterial stiffness (assessed by the ankle-brachial pulse wave velocity) and carotid plaque (detected by high-resolution real-time B-mode ultrasonography) in patients with cerebral thrombosis. The subjects were 109 patients with cerebral thrombosis aged 40–80 years.Fifty-six subjects had carotid plaque (27 had low-grade plaques (plaque score < 7.0) and 29 had high-grade plaques (plaque score ⩾ 7.0)) and 53 subjects did not have plaques. High pulse wave velocity was found to be significantly associated with existence of carotid plaque (p < 0.001), but was not associated with the severity of the plaque (p = 0.14) in multivariate logistic regression models. This study shows that the pulse wave velocity is associated with the existence of carotid atherosclerosis, but not with the severity of carotid atherosclerosis, in patients with cerebral thrombosis.