Particle Numbers of Lipoprotein Subclasses and Arterial Stiffness among Middle-aged men from the ERA JUMP study

We examined the association between serum lipoprotein subclasses and the three measures of arterial stiffness i.e. (i) carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) which is a gold standard measure of central arterial stiffness, (ii) brachial-ankle PWV (baPWV) which is emerging as a combined measure of central and peripheral arterial stiffness, and (iii) femoral-ankle PWV (faPWV) which is a measure of peripheral arterial stiffness. Among a population-based sample of 701 apparently healthy Caucasian, Japanese American and Korean men aged 40–49 years, concentrations of lipoprotein particles were assessed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and PWV was assessed with an automated waveform analyzer (VP2000, Omron, Japan). Multiple linear regressions were performed to analyze the association between each NMR lipoprotein subclasses and PWV measures, after adjusting for cardiovascular risk factors and other confounders. A cut-off of p<0.01 was used for determining significance. All PWV measures had significant correlations with total and small low-density lipoprotein particle number (LDL-P) (all p<0.0001) but not LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) (all p>0.1), independent of race and age. In multivariate regression analysis, no NMR lipoprotein subclass was significantly associated with cfPWV (all p>0.01). However, most NMR lipoprotein subclasses had significant associations with both baPWV and faPWV (p<0.01). In this study of healthy middle-aged men, as compared to cfPWV, both baPWV and faPWV had stronger associations with particle numbers of lipoprotein subclasses. Our results may suggest that both baPWV and faPWV are related to arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis, whereas cfPWV may represent arterial stiffness alone.