RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SERUM HOMOCYSTEINE AND CAROTID INTIMA MEDIA THICKNESS AND CROUSE SCORE OF PLAQUE IN PATIENTS WITH TYPE H HYPERTENSION

Xin Liu¹, Xianjuan Wei², Peng Wang³, Xinming Zhang^{2, *}

¹Department of Health Care, The Third People's Hospital of Qingdao, Qingdao, PR China - ²Department of General Surgery, Qingdao Hiser Medical Center, Qingdao, PR China - ³Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qingdao, PR China

Objective: This study analyses the relationship between the serum homocysteine (Hcy), carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and plaque Crouse score in patients with H-type hypertension. 

Methods: One hundred and four patients with essential hypertension that were treated in our department of neurology from July 2017 to May 2019 were randomly selected. According to whether their Hcy level was greater than 10 μmol/L, the patients were divided into an H-type hypertension group (86 cases) and a simple hypertension group (18 cases). At the same time, 36 healthy subjects who came to our hospital for a physical examination were randomly selected as the control group. Blood pressure (systolic and diastolic blood pressure), blood lipid indicators levels (triglycerides [TG], total cholesterol [TC], low-density lipoprotein [LDL], and high-density lipoprotein [HDL]), serum Hcy, IMT levels and changes in the plaque Crouse score were measured. The Pearson correlation was used to analyse the relationship between the serum Hcy, IMT and plaque Crouse score in patients with H-type hypertension.

Results: Compared with the control group, HDL in the H-type hypertension group was significantly lower (P<0.05). There were no significant differences in TC, TG and LDL levels among the three groups (P>0.05). Compared with the control group, the level of Hcy in the simple hypertension group was significantly lower, and the plaque detection rate in the H-type hypertension group was significantly higher. The IMT in both the H-type hypertension group and the simple hypertension group was significantly higher, and the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05). The 54 patients with plaque were divided into a stable plaque group (43 cases) and an unstable plaque group (11 cases) according to the plaque stability. Compared with the unstable plaque group, the Crouse score of the stable plaque group was significantly lower (P<0.05), whereas the serum Hcy and IMT levels of the two groups did not significantly differ (P>0.05). According to the Pearson correlation test analysis, there was no correlation between the serum Hcy level and plaque Crouse score, but the Hcy level was significantly positively correlated with the IMT level (P<0.05).

Conclusion: Hcy is an important risk factor for IMT in patients with H-type hypertension. The plaque Crouse score is related to the stability of patients with plaque, but has no significant correlation with the Hcy level.