The correlation between red blood cell distribution width and severity of brain white matter lesions

DU Shu-hua; QIN Si-si; YANG Can-hong; WANG Xiao-feng; MAI Han-tao; HUANG Wei-hua; LYU Tian-ming

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1001-9448.2017.22.008

Abstract：Objective To investigate the correlation between red blood cell distribution width ( RDW) and sever-ity of brain white matter lesions ( WML) .Methods A total of 409 patients with WML , were chosen for our study .The clinical data and risk factors were retrospectively analyzed .Results In this study, 409 patients with WML were divided into 2 groups, mild WML (n=266) and moderate to severe WML (n=143).The results of univariate analysis showed that age, hypertension, erythrocyte count, hemoglobin, red blood cell distribution width -standard deviation (RDW-SD), red blood cell distribution width -correlation variance (RDW-CV), fibrinogen, creatinine, total cholesterol and homocysteine were significantly different ( P<0.05) between mild WML and moderate to severe WML patients .The re-sults of multivariate logistic regression indicated that when RDW -CV acted as continuous variable data , age ( OR =1.158, 95%CI 1.122-1.195, P<0.001), Hypertension ( OR=2.103, 95%CI 1.254 -3.526, P=0.005), and RDW-CV (OR=1.308, 95%CI 1.062-1.610, P=0.011) were the independent risk factors for moderate to severe WML after adjusted confounding factors .The receiver operating characteristic curve ( ROC) was constructed to determine the predictive value of RDW-CV for moderate to severe WML .The area under curve (AUC) was 0.643 (95%CI 0.587-0.699, P<0.001).The best cut-off value determined by Yoden Index was 13.05%for RDW-CV with the sensitivity of 51.0%and the specificity of 74.1%.Conclusion Age, hypertension , and RDW-CV were the independent risk fac-tors for moderate to severe WML in patients with WML .High RDW-CV provides a certain predictive value for moderate to severe WML.