• Younghoon Kwon, Sara Mariani, Michelle Reid, David Jacobs, Joao Lima, Vishesh Kapur, Naresh Punjabi, and Susan Redline.
• Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. Electronic address: kwonx208@umn.edu.
• Sleep Med. 2020 Nov 1; 75: 8-11.

BackgroundLung to finger circulation time (LFCT) measured from sleep studies may represent a novel physiologic marker for cardiovascular risk in patients with sleep disordered breathing (SDB). We hypothesized that sleep study-derived LFCT would improve risk classification of markers of subclinical cardiovascular disease.MethodsWe included participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) Sleep cohort with moderate-severe SDB (apnea hypopnea index [AHI] ≥ 15/hr) (N = 598).ResultsThose with average LFCT above the median (19.4 s) (vs. shorter LFCT) tended to be older, more obese and male. In multivariable analysis, no significant associations were found between average LFCT and subclinical cardiovascular markers including coronary artery calcium, carotid intima-media thickness or left ventricular hypertrophy. However, there was modest improvement in risk classification of coronary artery calcification as compared with AHI alone when average LFCT was added to AHI (C statistics 0.53 vs. 0.62, p = 0.0066).ConclusionsIn conclusion, LFCT may be a useful addition to conventional SDB metrics to improve cardiovascular risk assessment.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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