Research Article Common Carotid Artery Diameter and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Overweight or Obese Postmenopausal Women

Copyright © 2012 Kelly D. Lloyd et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Arterial diameter is an underutilized indicator of vascular health. We hypothesized that interadventitial and lumen diameter of the common carotid artery would be better indicators of vascular health than carotid plaque or intima media thickness (IMT). Participants were 491 overweight or obese, postmenopausal women who were former or current hormone therapy (HT) users, 52– 62 years, with waist circumference> 80 cm. We evaluated cross-sectional associations of cardiovascular risk factors with carotid measures, by HT status. Former HT users had a worse cardiovascular profile than current HT users: larger adventitial (6.94mm versus 6.79mm) and lumen diameter (5.44mm versus 5.31mm, both P < 0.01) independent of cardiovascular risk factors; IMT and plaque were similar. Larger diameters were best explained by former HT use, higher pulse pressure, and greater weight. Independent of potential confounders, overweight and obese postmenopausal former HT users had larger carotid diameters than current HT users. Carotid diameter should be considered in studies of HT. 1