Student Presenter(s): Alexander Malayev, Puneet Dhaliwal, Danyang Ma, Saud A. Nasruddin, and Michael Gao
Faculty Mentor: Olga Savinova
School/College: Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury

Patients presenting with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are more likely to have cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Vascular calcification is a hallmark of CVD in patients with CKD. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of CKD-induced vascular calcification on the progression and regression of atherosclerotic CVD. Mice with lowdensity lipoprotein receptor gene mutation were divided into two groups. In the experimental group, CKD was induced by supplementing their diet with 0.2% adenine, a nephrotoxin. Both experimental and control groups were fed a western diet. Standard echocardiograms and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) were obtained at baseline and 18 weeks of age. Cardiac parameters, including heart rate, left ventricular (LV) diameter, and wall thickness were recorded to calculate ejection fraction, cardiac output, and LV mass. A two-way ANOVA was used to determine the effect of adenine on structure and function after adjusting for sex. A significance was accepted at p < 0.05. Consistent with our prior observations, our results showed that mice with CKD had reduced heart rate and increased left ventricle internal diameter and wall thickness adjusted to the body weight. Here, we have established a reproducible model of CKDinduced cardiac dysfunction. This model will be used to study lipid abnormalities associated with adenine treatments and the effect of CKD-induced calcification in the progression and regression of atherosclerosis and cardiac physiology.