The more your
belly sticks out, the greater
your risk of developing heart
disease, a new study shows.
"The
message is really obesity
in the abdomen matters even
more than obesity overall,"
Dr. Carlos Iribarren of Kaiser
Permanente of Northern California
in Oakland, the study's lead
author stated.
Body mass index (BMI), a
gauge of weight in relation
to height, is a fairly crude
way to judge a person's heart
disease risk based on obesity,
he noted. For example, muscular
people may have a high BMI
and be perfectly healthy.
In the current study, Iribarren
and his team tested whether
sagittal abdominal diameter,
or SAD, which is the distance
from the back to the upper
abdomen midway between the
top of the pelvis and the
bottom of the ribs, would
improve the accuracy of BMI
in predicting heart disease
risk.
Waist circumference is widely
used to measure obesity in
the abdominal area, Iribarren
noted. But while there are
many ways to measure a person's
waist, he added, SAD, which
is evaluated by a doctor or
nurse with a caliper, is much
more standardized, and therefore
probably less subject to error.
He and his colleagues looked
at 101,765 men and women who
underwent checkups between
1965 and 1970, which included
SAD measurements, and were
then followed for about 12
years.
Men with the largest SAD
were 42 percent more likely
to develop heart disease during
follow-up compared to those
with the smallest SAD, while
a large SAD increased heart
disease risk by 44 percent
for women, Iribarren and his
team found.
Within BMI categories, the
researchers found, heart disease
risk rose with SAD; even among
men of normal weight, heart
disease risk was higher for
those with bigger bellies.
The relationship between
SAD and heart disease risk
was strongest among the youngest
men and women, which is not
surprising, Iribarren said,
given that people who develop
central obesity younger in
life would likely have more
serious problems.
"I think it has important
implications for prevention,"
he said. " Don't let this
happen to you when you're
young, that's kind of the
message."
SOURCE: American Journal
of Epidemiology, December
15, 2006
