Fig 1.
Selection of study participants.
Fig 2.
Radiographic images with (A) no abdominal aortic calcification (AAC), (B) moderate AAC (AAC-24 score = 4), and (C) moderate AAC (AAC-24 score = 16). AAC is indicated by white arrows.
Table 1.
Classification of abdominal aortic calcification by Kauppila et al.[10].
Fig 3.
Measurement of intima-media thickness (IMT) in an ultrasonic image.
CCA: common carotid artery, ICA: Internal carotid artery, ECA: External carotid artery.
Fig 4.
Percentage (%) of abdominal aortic calcification (AAC) by age group.
The presence of AAC was assessed as shown in Table 1 (grades 1–3).
Fig 5.
Distribution of AAC-24 scores in all participants (n = 309).
Table 2.
Clinical background of the subjects (n = 309).
Table 3.
Characteristics of the 309 cases by category of AAC-24 score.
Fig 6.
Relationship between AAC-24 scores and age (Spearman ρ = 0.784, p<0.05).
Fig 7.
Relationship between AAC-24 scores and IMT (Spearman ρ = 0.634, p<0.05).
Table 4.
Difference in variables between subjects with and without carotid artery plaque.
Table 5.
Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses for carotid artery plaque.
Fig 8.
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for prediction of carotid artery plaque using AAC-24 scores, age, and a combination of these factors.
Based on c-statistics, the area under the curve (AUC) for age was 0.632 [95% CI 0.569–0.696], and the AUC for AAC-24 was 0.779 [95% CI 0.692–0.865]. Combining AAC-24 with age significantly increased the AUC to 0.834 [95% CI 0.766–0.902].
Table 6.
Reclassification of the total cohort based on models using age and AAC-24 scores in subjects with or without carotid artery plaque.
Table 7.
C-statistic and measures and model fit for the conventional risk factors of age and AAC-24.