Abstract:
Background Previous studies show that red blood cell distribution width (RDW) can reflect the inflammatory state in vivo, and the systemic chronic inflammatory state plays an important role in the target organ injury of hypertension.
Objective To explore the relationship between RDW and target organ damage in senior elderly patients with hypertension.
Methods All hypertensive patients aged over 80 years admitted to geriatric cardiovascular department of Chinese PLA General Hospital from January 2016 to December 2019 were enrolled and the subjects were divided into quartiles according RDW, quantile 1 (<12.80%), quantile 2 (12.80%-13.30%), quantile 3(13.31%-13.97%) and quantile 4 (>13.97%). Then blood routine test and biochemical indexes, echocardiography and carotid ultrasound parameters in patients of the four groups were measured. Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship among RDW and ventricular hypertrophy, cardiac function, renal function.
Results The patients with higher RDW level were older and had higher TG and creatinine levels, lower estimated glomerular filtration rate (all P < 0.05). With the increase of RDW level, the interventricular septum thickness (IVST) and left ventricular posterior wall thickness (LVPWT) increased, so did left ventricular mass index (LVMI). The incidence of left ventricular hypertrophy of four groups were 6.45%, 16.00%, 16.83% and 23.71%, respectively, and it increased significantly with the increase of RDW (Pfor trend=0.013). The left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) as well as fractional shortening (FS) decreased in patients with higher RDW level (P < 0.05, respectively), however, the diastolic function showed no significant difference in patients with different RDW levels (P > 0.05). Further correlation analysis showed that RDW was positively correlated with LVPWT (r=0.684, P<0.001) and LVMI (r=0.623, P<0.001), while it was negatively correlated with LVEF (r=-0.218, P<0.001) and prealbumin (r=-0.537, P<0.001). The AUC of RDW in predicting left ventricular hypertrophy was 0.633 (95% CI: 0.553 - 0.708, P=0.001). The incidence of carotid plaque in patients with different levels of RDW was 57.1%, 67.7%, 76.6% and 79.1%, respectively (Pfor trend=0.008).
Conclusion With the increase of RDW, the incidence of carotid plaque and ventricular hypertrophy increases in senior elderly hypertensive patients, while the cardiac systolic function decreases, and the nutritional status is poor. Monitoring RDW level can help to screen out high-risk patients with target organ damage.