The Association Between Platelet Indices and Cardiovascular Events in Chronic Kidney Disease Patients Without Dialysis

Purpose: Previous studies have indicated that platelet indices are related to the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). However, it is unclear which platelet-related indicators are associated with CVD events in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) without dialysis.

Methods: We performed a single-center prospective cohort study involved 1391 CKD patients to explore the relationship between platelet indices and CVD events in CKD patients. A nomogram was generated to predict CVD-free survival after 3 and 5 years of follow-up in terms of the fitted Cox regression model. And the time-dependent receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were applied to evaluate the prediction accuracy of platelet indices on CVD events.

Results: During a median follow-up of 3.41 years, 211 (15.2%) patients experienced CVD events. Results showed that platelet counts (PLT), plateletcrit (PCT), platelet-large cell ratio (P-LCR), and platelet distribution width (PDW) among 5 platelet indices were significantly lower in advanced CKD stages. Cox regression model showed that PLT, PDW, and PCT were associated with CVD events. However, after multivariable-adjusted, low level of PLT, hazard ratio (HR) 0.994 and 95% confidence interval (95% CI 0.989-1.000, p = 0.04), and PDW, HR 0.936 (95% CI 0.878-0.998, p = 0.044) predicted CVD events. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of platelet indices assessed by time-dependent ROC curve analysis showed that only PLT and PDW were significant for predicting CVD events for 5 years.

Conclusions: We demonstrated that PLT and PDW among 5 platelet indices were independently associated with CVD events in patients with CKD.