Last Thursday 16/06/2022 at 11h Mr. José Maria Martínez-Calcerrada Collell read his doctoral thesis entitled: "Uric acid, perirenal fat and renal size as new markers of cardiovascular risk in healthy paediatric population", directed by Dr. Judit Bassols Casadevall and Dr. Abel López Bermejo.

Thesis abstract

Despite remarkable advances in health promotion in recent decades, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, increasingly contributing to obesity. Cardiovascular risk factors (CVR) appear early in life and their detection in the paediatric age is important to identify the population at risk and to develop prevention strategies.

The main objective of this work is to identify new markers of easy determination and application that can help in the clinical evaluation and prevention of cardiovascular diseases in the paediatric population. Specifically, the relationship of uric acid, perirenal fat and renal size with carotid intima-media thickness (c-IMT; marker of subclinical atherosclerosis) and classical cardiovascular risk factors is studied in a cohort of 702 healthy prepubertal children with various degrees of obesity.

The results show that 1) uric acid levels are associated with several classical cardiovascular risk factors and are independent predictors of cIMT, especially in children with higher body mass index (BMI) and greater preperitoneal fat; 2) perirenal fat is the abdominal fat depot most strongly associated with cIMT, especially in overweight and obese children; 3) renal size (length and volume) is also positively associated with several cardiovascular risk factors and shows independent associations with cIMT and SAD in obese children.

We can conclude that uric acid levels, perirenal fat and renal size are associated with several cardiovascular risk factors, especially in overweight and obese children, and therefore may represent a useful parameter to assess cardiovascular risk and the occurrence of atherosclerotic disease in the healthy paediatric population.