Abstract
Recent studies have revealed an inverse association between height and cardiovascular disease and that endothelial progenitor cells (CD34-positive cells) contribute to vascular maintenance, which is associated with cardiovascular disease. However, evidence of the association between height and CD34-positive positive cells among elderly participants is limited. To assess this association, we conducted a cross-sectional study of 231 elderly Japanese men aged 65–69. Since enhanced production of circulating CD34-positive cells in response to endothelial injury might act have a strong confounding effect on the association between height and circulating CD34-positive cells, the median value for the levels of these cells (0.93 cells/μL) was used to stratify the participants. Multivariable linear regression analysis demonstrated that height was significantly positively associated with circulating CD34-positive cells for those participants with low levels of circulating CD34-positive cells (n=114) but not for those with higher levels (n=117), with a multi-adjusted standardized parameter estimate (β) of 0.27 (p=0.008) for low and 0.11 (0.275) for higher circulating CD34-positive cell levels. The positive association is limited to participants with relatively low circulating CD34-positive cell levels, whose productivity of these cells is not activated. Our findings indicate that height is an indicator of vascular maintenance capability in elderly Japanese men.
Highlights
Many recent studies have reported an inverse association between height and cardiovascular disease including stroke incidence [1,2,3,4]
Recent studies have revealed an inverse association between height and cardiovascular disease and that endothelial progenitor cells (CD34‐positive cells) contribute to vascular maintenance, which is associated with cardiovascular disease
Multivariable linear regression analysis demonstrated that height was significantly positively associated with circulating CD34‐positive cells for those participants with low levels of circulating CD34‐positive cells (n=114) but not for those with higher levels (n=117), with a multi‐adjusted standardized parameter estimate (β) of 0.27 (p=0.008) for low and 0.11 (0.275) for higher circulating CD34‐positive cell levels
Summary
Many recent studies have reported an inverse association between height and cardiovascular disease including stroke incidence [1,2,3,4]. Our previous studies indicate that the risk of stroke for participants with short stature could not be explained by the existence of atherosclerosis but could be explained by a lower capability for vascular maintenance [4,5,6,7,8,9]. The association between circulating CD34positive cell levels and height could have an effect on vascular maintenance capability [8, 9]. We reported in a previous study that aggressive endothelial repair causes the elevation of circulating CD34-postive cells by increasing the activity of CD34-positive cell production and causes consumptive reduction of circulating CD34positive cells [14,15,16,17]. Since a high level of CD34-positive cells (≥median value) can be assumed to be associated with endothelial injury [18], limiting the participants of the analysis to those with low levels of CD34-positive cells could reduce the influence of this confounding factor
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