Retinol-binding protein 4 is closely correlated to blood pressure level and E/A in untreated essential hypertension patients

Abstract

Background: Hypertension, a common chronic disease, is a leading cause of death and other cardiovascular diseases. Recent studies show that an inflammatory factor named retinol binding protein 4 (RBP4) was increased with cardiovascular diseases. However, the relationship between RBP4 and hypertension in patients remains unclear. Methods: The study cohort was composed of patients with essential hypertension (EH) and healthy control (HC) subjects from the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University [2017–2019]. The levels of RBP4 and echocardiography were compared in the current study. Statistical differences between two groups were analyzed using unpaired Student’s t-tests and the correlation between the two variables adopts Pearson correlation analysis. SPSS 23.0 was used for all statistical analysis. Results: Analysis of patient plasma samples revealed that RBP4 in EH group was greater than HC group (P<0.05). The area under the ROC curve was 0.717. Specificity and sensitivity were 80.4% and 60.8%, respectively. RBP4 had positive correlation with left ventricular systolic diameter (LVDs), interventricular septal thickness (IVS) and left ventricular posterior wall thickness (LVPW), negative correlation with left ventricular shortening fraction (FS) and ejection fraction (EF) (P<0.05), and no correlation with left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVDd) (P>0.05). RBP4 was closely related with E/A, evaluation method of left ventricular diastolic function, in patients with EH. Conclusions: RBP4 levels are closely correlated with blood pressure (BP) levels and might be involved in the regulation of left ventricular diastolic function in patients with EH.