TITLE:
Discrimination and stratification tests of cardiovascular disease risk assessment models against ultrasound detection of carotid plaques in type 2 diabetics
AUTHORS:
Lawrence W. C. Chan, Yu Sun, Iris F. F. Benzie
KEYWORDS:
Atherosclerosis; Cardiovascular Disease; Doppler Ultrasound; Risk Assessment
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.5 No.7A,
July
16,
2013
ABSTRACT: Atherosclerosis
is the early stage of arterial disease, and underlies development of cardiovascular
disease (CVD) and stroke. Although sophisticated models for assessing CVD and
stroke risk have been derived based on large-scale
prospective studies, their abilities in detecting the presence or absence
of atherosclerotic plaque have not been investigated. This study aimed to
evaluate and compare discriminatory and risk stratifying abilities of 13 CVD
risk assessment models against the ultrasound detection of carotid plaques
in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. Forty-nine T2DM subjects were
recruited with informed consent, and major anthropomorphic and biomarker data
for these models were collected. The model risk scores were evaluated against
the carotid plaques detected by Doppler ultrasound. Only the FHS-Lpts-CHD-10Y
model, which is a variant of the Framingham model, revealed an area under the
receiver operating curve (AUROC) that was significantly different from a
random scoring approach (AUROC: 0.681, p was able to stratify the risk
levels of carotid plaque presence (Chi-Square statistic: 5.99, p