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The choroid is the most vascularized structure of the eye and plays a central role in the development of the retinal vascular changes that occur in arterial hypertension. Changes of choroidal thickness (ChT) assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology could reflect the vascular complications of hypertension. Also, intrarenal hemodynamic damage, associated with endothelial dysfunction, demonstrated to be a good indicator of systemic morphofunctional arterial impairment. The aim of this study is to assess the relationship between ChT and renal hemodynamics in subjects with essential hypertension. Routine laboratory tests, clinical history, and physical examination, including blood pressure assessment, were performed in 90 subjects with essential hypertension. All patients underwent Doppler ultrasonographic evaluation of intra-renal hemodynamics and OCT imaging to assess ChT. When subjects were divided in two groups based on renal resistive index (RRI), group I (RRI ≥ 75% percentile) showed significantly lower values of ChT than group II (RRI < 75% percentile) (P < .001). When divided in two groups based on the ChT median values, patients with lower ChT had significantly higher RRI values than those with ChT above the median values (P < .05). In multivariate model including age, eGFR, and other variables as confounding factors, RRI ≥ 75% was independently associated with ChT. ChT was significantly correlated with renal resistive index in subjects with essential hypertension, confirmed in multivariate analyses. This result could be referred to changes in vascular elastic properties that occur in retinal and intrarenal vascular system probably due to oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction commonly found in early complications of hypertension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity is a well-known risk factor for the development and progression of chronic kidney disease. Recently, para-perirenal ultrasonographic fat thickness (PUFT) has shown to correlate with both total and visceral fat better than body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and other indices of obesity. Moreover, a local paracrine and mechanical action of the PUFT on kidney has been described in recent studies. Aim of our study was to assess the relationship between glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and PUFT in comparison with other anthropometric and ultrasonographic indices of adiposity. Two hundred and ninety-six hypertensive patients were enrolled. PUFT, cutis-rectis thickness and rectis-aorta thickness were obtained by ultrasonography. Anthropometric measures of adiposity were also measured. Estimated GFR was calculated using the CKD-EPI equation. Higher PUFT values were observed in patients with impaired renal function (P < 0.001), whereas no differences in BMI and WC were shown between groups divided by GFR. PUFT significantly correlated with GFR in all patients (r = -0.284; P < 0.001), with no differences in groups divided by sex, diabetes, or BMI. This association held in multivariate analyses also after correction for confounding factors, including other adiposity indices (P < 0.001). When receiver operating characteristic curves were built to detect a eGFR < 60 mL/minutes per 1.73 m2 , a PUFT value ≤3.725 cm showed a negative predictive value of 94.0%, with the largest area under the curve (AUC: 0.700) among the variables considered. In conclusion, the relationship between PUFT and GFR seems to be more accurate and less influenced by the bias affecting traditional indices of adiposity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]