Did Dumbo suffer a heart attack? independent association between earlobe crease and cardiovascular disease

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders

Research Article

Peter Vollenweider¹  Pedro Marques-Vidal¹  Marta Aligisakis²  Idris Guessous³ 

[1] Department of Internal Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011, Lausanne, Switzerland;Faculty of Medicine, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland;Department of Internal Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011, Lausanne, Switzerland;Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (IUMSP), Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland;Department of Community Medicine, Primary Care and Emergency Medicine, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland;

关键词: Earlobe crease;    Cardiovascular diseases;    Cardiovascular risk factors;    Epidemiology;    Switzerland;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12872-016-0193-7

 received in 2015-08-15, accepted in 2016-01-12,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEarlobe crease (ELC) has been associated with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) or risk factors (CVRF) and could be a marker predisposing to CVD. However, most studies studied only a small number of CVRF and no complete assessment of the associations between ELC and CVRF has been performed in a single study.MethodsPopulation-based study (n = 4635, 46.7 % men) conducted between 2009 and 2012 in Lausanne, Switzerland.ResultsEight hundred six participants (17.4 %) had an ELC. Presence of ELC was associated with male gender and older age. After adjusting for age and gender (and medication whenever necessary), presence of ELC was significantly (p < 0.05) associated with higher levels of body mass index (BMI) [adjusted mean ± standard error: 27.0 ± 0.2 vs. 26.02 ± 0.07 kg/m2], triglycerides [1.40 ± 0.03 vs. 1.36 ± 0.01 mmol/L] and insulin [8.8 ± 0.2 vs. 8.3 ± 0.1 μIU/mL]; lower levels of HDL cholesterol [1.61 ± 0.02 vs. 1.64 ± 0.01 mmol/L]; higher frequency of abdominal obesity [odds ratio and (95 % confidence interval) 1.20 (1.02; 1.42)]; hypertension [1.41 (1.18; 1.67)]; diabetes [1.43 (1.15; 1.79)]; high HOMA-IR [1.19 (1.00; 1.42)]; metabolic syndrome [1.28 (1.08; 1.51)] and history of CVD [1.55 (1.21; 1.98)]. No associations were found between ELC and estimated cardiovascular risk, inflammatory or liver markers. After further adjustment on BMI, only the associations between ELC and hypertension [1.30 (1.08; 1.56)] and history of CVD [1.47 (1.14; 1.89)] remained significant. For history of CVD, further adjustment on diabetes, hypertension, total cholesterol and smoking led to similar results [1.36 (1.05; 1.77)].ConclusionIn this community-based sample ELC was significantly and independently associated with hypertension and history of CVD.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Aligisakis et al. 2016