Abstract: Objective  To investigate the correlation between serum visfatin and coronary artery calcification (CAC) in maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients. Methods  In this cross-sectional study, the general data of MHD patients in Beijing Luhe Hospital, Capital Medical University  were collected from July 1, 2023 to February 29, 2024. The serum visfatin level were detected.CAC level was evaluated by low-dose chest multi spiral  computed tomography (CT). According to the results of CT, the patients were divided into 2 groups, clinical characteristics were compared between 2 groups, multivariate Logistic regression was used to analyze the independent influencing factors of CAC. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to analyze the predictive value of influencing factors for CAC in MHD patients. Results  Totally 135 MHD patients were enrolled in this study and divided into non-CAC group (n=39) and CAC group (n=96).There were significant differences in age, diabetes mellitus, visfatin, blood glucose, serum sodium and urea clearance index(Kt/V)  between the two groups (P<0.05). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that older age, higher serum visfatin level and diabetes were independent risk factors for CAC in MHD patients. ROC curve showed that the area under the curve (AUC) of serum visfatin for predicting CAC in MHD patients was 0.751 (P<0.01), which had high predictive value. Conclusions  Increased serum visfatin level is an independent risk factor for CAC, and may be a potential biomarker for predicting CAC in MHD patients.

Key words: maintenance hemodialysis, visfatin, coronary artery calcification, low-dose chest multi spiral computed tomography scan