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Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects 10-15% of the general population and affected individuals are at an increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Since telomere length is considered to be involved in biological aging, we tested whether relative telomere length (RTL) might be a marker for these two diseases., Methods: The German Chronic Kidney Disease (GCKD) study is an ongoing prospective cohort study including patients with CKD of moderate severity. RTL was measured by qPCR in 4955 out of 5217 GCKD patients at baseline., Results: RTL was distributed in the cohort with a mean ± SD of 0.95 ± 0.19. CVD was present in 1266 patients. Each decrease of RTL by 0.1 unit was associated with a higher probability for prevalent CVD: OR = 1.06, 95% CI 1.02-1.11, p = 0.007 (adjusted for age, sex, eGFR, BMI, ln-CRP, smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and lipids). Similar findings were observed for history of specific CVD entities, such as coronary artery disease (OR = 1.05, p = 0.025), myocardial infarction (OR = 1.08, p = 0.013) and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (OR = 1.06, p = 0.032). The strongest associations were found for interventions at the carotid arteries (OR = 1.25, p = 0.001) as well as aortic aneurysms (OR = 1.22, p = 0.001)., Conclusions: In the presence of CKD there is a significant association between shorter RTL and CVD manifestations. RTL appears to be a marker reflecting changes in homeostasis associated with CKD that may contribute to the excess CVD risk., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To evaluate the association between a family history of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases or risk factors and the presence of peripheral artery disease (PAD)., Methods: Participants were recruited within one PAD case-control study (CAVASIC, n = 481) and two population-based studies (KORA-F3, n = 3118; KORA-F4, n = 1325). In the KORA studies, an ankle-brachial-index <0.9 and/or symptomatic claudication was defined as PAD. For myocardial infarction, stroke, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, PAD, and obesity, family risk scores (FamRS) were calculated taking into account the number and age of diseased parents and siblings and regressed on prevalent PAD or ankle-brachial-index., Results: A significant association with PAD was found for family history of myocardial infarction and hypertension in a combined analysis of all studies and for family history of PAD in the case-control study. A combined family history score was derived from FamRS myocardial infarction, stroke, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and PAD. A positive family history of at least two and/or a strong positive family history of at least one of these diseases was found to be associated with increased risk of prevalent PAD in all three studies, even after adjustment for classical risk factors (OR = 1.93, 95%CI = [1.53-2.44], p = 2.6 × 10(-8))., Conclusion: The presence of a positive family history for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases or risk factors was shown to be associated with the presence of PAD. A FamRS calculation tool that considers age and family size can guide a physician to perform extended examinations to prevent complications and progression of PAD., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)