6533b857fe1ef96bd12b39e4

RESEARCH PRODUCT

THU0520 Assessment of cardiovascular risk in patients with fibromyalgia by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity – results of a prospective study

subject

description

Background Autonomic dysfunction, a basic element of fibromyalgia (FM), has been in some cases related to increased risk of cardiovascular (CV) disease. CV risk associates with aortic stiffness, which can be reliably assessed by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV). Objectives Aims of this study were to test the hypothesis of increased cfPWV in a group of patients with FM and to examine its association with FM associated parameters and selected traditional CV risk factors. Methods We performed measurements of cfPWV in 99 FM patients and 102 healthy controls. The difference between cfPWV values in the two groups after controlling for possible confounding factors was evaluated through multiple regression analysis. The associations of cfPWV with FM related parameters such as pain severity on the EuroQol visual analogue scale (EQ-VAS) and FM tender points were also analysed. Finally, we explored the relationship of cfPWV with various laboratory parameters (patients’ group) and traditional CV risk factors (both groups). Results Adjusted statistical analyses for confounding factors showed significantly higher cfPWV values in FM patients in comparison to controls (padj=0.044). cfPWV associated significantly with age in both the patients and the control group (rho=0.614, p Conclusions Our data reveal that patients with FM have higher aortic stiffness than healthy controls, even after adjusting for confounding factors of cfPWV. Therefore, FM may be associated with an increased CV risk. To our knowledge, this is the largest study to examine the gold standard assessment method of aortic stiffness in patients with FM and the first one to find increased cfPWV-values in comparison to healthy subjects. Disclosure of Interest None declared