Left ventricular mass and correlated atherosclerotic risk factors young adolescents: report from Chin-Shan community cardiovascular study in Taiwan

Various subclinical disease indicators can be used as an early stage marker of atherosclerosis. Left ventricular (LV) mass has been related to cardiov ascular morbidity and mortality. The distribution of LV mass in Chinese is rarely studied and nothing is known bout its relationships with various ath erosclerotic risk factors in young teenagers, in particular, aspects of lip id profiles. We performed a community-based survey of 523 males and 555 fem ales, aged 12-15, in Chin-Shan, a suburb area near Taipei, Taiwan. LV mass was calculated from the Penn convention. Normalized LV mass by height with power of 2.7 was defined. LV mass and normalized LV mass were significantly greater in males than in females. There were significant positive correlat ion coefficients between LV mass and age, blood pressure, body mass index, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), apolipoprotein (Apo) B, fastin g insulin levels and significant negative correlation coefficients between LV mass and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and Apo A1 level i n both genders, Multiple linear regression models showed gender and body ma ss index (BMI) were important factors associated with LV mass or normalized values for adolescents. Age and systolic blood pressure were also signific ant predictors of LV mass, but not of normalized LV mass values. LV mass va lues were found to be negatively associated with HDL-C values at marginal s tatistically significant level. Age and BMI are the most significant factor s of echocardiographic LV mass distributions in young adolescent in Taiwan. LV mass may also be associated with atherosclerotic risk factors. (C) 2001 Elsevier science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.