Evaluation of the correlation between fetuin-B levels and essential hypertension: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Fetuin-B, a cytokine that regulates lipid metabolism, has recently been linked to cardiovascular diseases such as coronary heart disease. In this study, we discussed the relationship between fetuin-B and essential hypertension. METHOD: A bioinformatics analysis of fetuin-B was performed. A total of 206 with essential hypertension and 180 age- and-sex-matched healthy subjects were enrolled. Plasma fetuin-B, endothelin 1 (ET-1), nitric oxide (NO), and adiponectin (ADI) levels were measured using ELISA kits. RESULTS: Bioinformatics analysis has revealed that fetuin-B plays an important role in pathways such as lipid metabolism. Compared with healthy subjects, serum fetuin-B levels in patients with essential hypertension were significantly increased. Correlation analysis showed that the serum fetuin-B level was positively correlated with systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure, body mass index, fat percentage in vivo, waist–hip ratio, intima–media thickness, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), glutamyltranspeptidase, alanine transaminase, albumin, fasting blood glucose (FBG), glycated hemoglobin, and ET-1 in the overall study subjects (all P < 0.05) and negatively correlated with HDL-C, ADI, and NO (all P < 0.05). Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that SBP, FBG, LDL-C, ADI, and ET-1 were independent factors affecting serum fetuin-B. A binary logistic regression analysis showed that fetuin-B was an independent risk factor for primary hypertension (odds ratio: 1.060, 95% CI: 1.034–1.086, P < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to evaluate the predictive value of fetuin-B for primary hypertension, and the optimal cutoff point was 83.14 μg/mL (sensitivity 77.4%, specificity 63.3%) (area under the curve) = 0.7738, 95% CI 0.7276–0.8200, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Elevated fetuin-B levels are associated with an increased risk of essential hypertension.