ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Pediatric Endocrinology
Application Research on the Quantitative Evaluation of Carotid Arterial Elasticity in Overweight Adolescents Using Ultra-Fast Pulse Wave Technology
Affiliated Hospital, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
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Abstract
Background Overweight and obesity in adolescents has become a new worldwide health problem. Overweight in adolescence not only leads to persistent overweight and even obesity in adulthood, but also leads to decreased arterial function in adolescence and a greatly increased incidence of chronic diseases in adulthood. In this study, Ultrafast pulse wave velocity (UFPWV) technology was used to quantitatively evaluate the carotid artery elasticity in adolescents with simple overweight. In order to find the changes of carotid artery elasticity and related influencing factors in overweight adolescents at an early stage. Data and Methods A total of 56 adolescents meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria were enrolled: 30 with BMI ≥24 kg/m² (overweight group) and 26 with normal BMI and clinical findings (control group). All participants underwent assessment of clinical and biochemical parameters, carotid intima-media thickness (IMT), and arterial elasticity via PWVBS and PWVES. Results The mean values of IMT, PWVBS and PWVES in overweight group were higher than those in normal group. There was significant difference between PWVBS and PWVES (P <0.05), but not IMT (P >0.05). PWVBS and PWVES in overweight group were positively correlated with BMI, uric acid (UA), total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (all P <0.05). And negatively correlated with High-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (P <0.05). Within the overweight group, the subgroup with elevated uric acid (UA) levels showed significantly higher arterial elasticity parameters compared to the subgroup with normal UA levels (P < 0.05), whereas no statistically significant difference was observed in IMT between the two subgroups (P > 0.05).Receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC) analysis showed that when PWVES>4.515 m/s was used as the cut-off value of abnormal carotid elasticity in overweight adolescents in this study, the sensitivity was 71.8%. The specificity was 73.2%. Conclusion UFPWV can detect early changes in carotid artery elasticity in overweight adolescents;When hyperlipidemia and hyperuricemia coexist, they exert a synergistic detrimental effect on arterial elastic function;The arterial elasticity indexes PWVBS and PWVES are significantly correlated with a variety of traditional risk factors of atherosclerosis (AS), which can be used AS effective indicators to predict early AS.
Summary
Keywords
adolescents, carotidartery elasticity, Overweight, Ultrafast pulse wave velocity, Ultrasonography
Received
28 April 2025
Accepted
16 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Gong and Xue. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Nianyu Xue
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