Objective To investigate the relationship between carotid artery atherosclerosis and risk factor in a young and middle-aged population in China who received health checkup.Methods A total of 762 cases of young and middle-aged adult were recruited between April and October in 2013.These subjects had no hypertension,diabetes,coronary heart disease,cerebrovascular disease,and connective tissue disease,etc.Their Blood pressure,serum glucose (Glu),total cholesterol (TC),triglyceride (TG),and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were measured and carotid artery ultrasonography was performed.Of the 762 cases,589 were male,173 were female,mean age was (46 ± 9) years.For blood pressure,blood lipids,the t test was performed to detect the difference between arteriosclerosis group and non arteriosclerosis group in different age groups.Logistic regression was performed to reveal the risk factors with carotid arteriosclerosis.Results Of the 762 subjects,205 had carotid artery atherosclerosis; 30.2％ (178/589) of them were men and 15.6％(27/173) of them were women,with a significant difference between two groups,(x2=14.522,P=0.000).In the younger than 40 years old group,the diastolic blood pressure has statistical significance between carotid arteriosclerosis and non carotid arteriosclerosis group (t=-2.789,P＜ 0.05); blood sugar had statistically significant difference between the two groups (t value was-2.256,-2.930,-2.174,respectivly,P＜0.05).Multiple regression analysis revealed that the independent risk factors for carotid artery arteriosclerosis were age,sex,DBP,and Glu.The regression coefficients were 0.993,0.711,0.047,0.334 seperately.The ROC curve of age was analyzed,the area under the ROC curve was 0.731,cut-off was 51 years old.Conclusions Routine carotid artery ultrasound should be performed for older than 50 healthy middle-aged men,to determine whether arteriosclerosis exists,especially for people with abnormal blood glucose or elevated DBP.