on February 7, 2002
Published online before print February 7, 2002, doi: 10.1161/01.ATV.0000012662.29622.00
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Submitted on December 26, 2001
Accepted on January 28, 2002
Age and Sex Distribution of Subclinical Aortic Atherosclerosis. A Magnetic Resonance Imaging Examination of the Framingham Heart Study
Farouc A. Jaffer ;
From the Harvard-Thorndike Laboratory of the Department of Medicine, Cardiovascular Division (F.A.J., S.K.C., K.V.K., C.S., R.M.B., D.L., W.J.M.), and the Department of Radiology (W.J.M.), Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study (C.J.O., M.G.L., M.J.K., D.L.), Framingham, Mass; and the Cardiology Division (F.A.J., C.J.O.), Department of Internal Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wmanning{at}caregroup.harvard.edu.
Abstract—Autopsy data demonstrate a correlation between subclinical aortic atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, noninvasive cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) of subclinical atherosclerosis may provide a novel measure of cardiovascular risk, but it has not been applied to an asymptomatic population-based cohort to establish age- and sex-specific normative data. Participants in the Framingham Heart Study offspring cohort who were free of clinically apparent coronary disease were randomly sampled from strata of sex, quartiles of age, and quintiles of Framingham Coronary Risk Score. Subjects (n=318, aged 60±9 years, range 36 to 78 years, 51% women) underwent ECG-gated T2-weighted black-blood thoracoabdominal aortic CMR scanning. CMR evidence of aortic atherosclerosis was noted in 38% of the women and 41% of the men. Plaque prevalence and all measures of plaque burden increased with age group and were greater in the abdomen than in the thorax for both sexes and across all age groups. In addition, the Framingham Coronary Risk Score was significantly correlated with all plaque prevalence and burden measures for women but only for men after age adjustment. These noninvasive CMR data extend the prior autopsy-based prevalence estimates of subclinical atherosclerosis and may help to lay the foundation for future studies of risk stratification and treatment of affected individuals.
Key words: magnetic resonance imaging • aortas • atherosclerosis • imaging • subclinical disease