From USC: The relationship between measures of obesity and incident heart failure

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23441088

Obesity (Silver Spring). 2013 Jan 2. doi: 10.1002/oby.20298. [Epub ahead of print]

The relationship between measures of obesity and incident heart failure: The multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis.

Ebong IA, Goff DC Jr, Rodriguez CJ, Chen H, Bluemke DA, Szklo M, Bertoni AG.

Source

Department of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. ebong@usc.edu.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To evaluate the strength of association of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) with incident heart failure (HF), exploring our associations by ethnicity and age.

DESIGN AND METHODS:

We included 6,809 participants, aged 45-84 years, without clinical cardiovascular disease (2000-2002), from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Cox-Proportional hazards models were used to examine associations of BMI and WC with incident HF. The predictive abilities of BMI and WC were compared using receiver operating characteristic curves.

RESULTS:

Over a median follow-up of 7.6 years, there were 176 cases. BMI and WC were associated with incident HF in men [1.33 (1.10-1.61) and 1.38 (1.18-1.62) respectively] and women [1.70 (1.33-2.17) and 1.64 (1.29-2.08) respectively]. These associations became non-significant after adjusting for obesity-related conditions (hypertension, dysglycemia, hypercholesterolemia, left ventricular hypertrophy, kidney disease and inflammation). The associations of BMI and WC did not vary significantly by ethnicity or age-group, but were inverse in Hispanic men. The area under the curve for BMI and WC was 0.749 and 0.750, respectively, in men and 0.782 and 0.777, respectively, in women.

CONCLUSIONS:

The association between obesity and incident HF is largely mediated by obesity-related conditions. BMI and WC have similar predictive abilities for incident HF.