Luana de Rezende Mikael, Anelise Machado Gomes de Paiva, Marco Mota Gomes, Ana Luiza Lima Sousa, Paulo César Brandão Veiga Jardim, Priscila Valverde de Oliveira Vitorino, Maicon Borges Euzébio, Wátila de Moura Sousa, Weimar Kunz Sebba Barroso
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) account annually for almost one third of all deaths worldwide. Among the CVD, systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) is related to more than half of those outcomes. Type 2 diabetes mellitus is an independent risk factor for SAH because it causes functional and structural damage to the arterial wall, leading to stiffness. Several studies have related oxidative stress, production of free radicals, and neuroendocrine and genetic changes to the physiopathogenesis of vascular aging. Indirect ways to analyze that aging process have been widely studied, pulse wave velocity (PWV) being considered gold standard to assess arterial stiffness, because there is large epidemiological evidence of its predictive value for cardiovascular events, and it requires little technical knowledge to be performed...
September 2017: Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia