Hippokratia 2006, 10(1):35-38
D Yonova, S Dobrev
Dialysis Clinic, Central Clinical Lab, Medical University Hospital, Sofia, Bulgaria
Abstract
The protective role of high density lipoproteins (HDL) on the delopment of vascular calcifications with atheromatous and medial forms of calcium deposits have been recently suggested. Vascular calcification shares several features with skeletal bone formation at the cellular and molecular levels. Lack or decreasing of serum HDL leads to higher vascular calcification in general population and perhaps even more severely it happens to patients with chronic renal failure where the lipid metabolism is frequently disturbed. Another supposed factor for arterial calcification is the presence of inflammation. The high rate of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in haemodialysis (HD) patients and the special impor-tance of presence of vascular calcification in that pathology initiates this study, which has set a goal to establish whether there is a relation between: a). lipid profile and inflammation, accounting C-reactive protein as one of its typical markers, and: b). both lipid profile and inflammation and vascular calcification rate in a group of HD patients, comparing HD group with a group of healthy volunteers.