Association between Cystatin C and Peripheral Artery Disease in the Chinese Han Population

BACKGROUND Recent studies of the association between cystatin C and peripheral artery disease (PAD) have produced inconsistent results, and few studies have been conducted to investigate this association in the Chinese Han population. Therefore, we evaluated the relationship between cystatin C and PAD using Chinese data. METHODS We performed a secondary analysis of the data from a previously published case-control study about PAD in our center. We examined the relationship between cystatin C and PAD by logistic regression models and subgroup and interaction analyses. We also constructed a propensity score-matched population by matching the conventional risk factors to further validate this association. In addition, we explored the relationship between cystatin C level and ankle-brachial index (ABI) strata (