Smoking associates with visceral fat accumulation especially in women

Smoking and metabolic syndrome (MetS) are major public health problems in modern society and are important risk factors of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The association of smoking, MetS, and CVD is widely reported, but reports targeted to women are few. In the present study, we evaluated risk factors, including visceral fat area (VFA), for CVD and development of subclinical atherosclerosis in female smokers especially.

Subjects consisted of 162 apparent healthy female and male smokers, and 315 age-matched never-smokers who underwent a health examination in the Osaka University Health Care Center. For female smokers, lifestyle and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) were evaluated. Triglycerides were significantly higher and high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol significantly lower in smokers than in never-smokers for both men and women. However, VFA was significantly high only in smoking women when compared with never-smokers. Multivariate analysis revealed that age, body mass index, and smoking were the independent predictors of high VFA in women. In addition, annual IMT increase was significantly higher in smokers than never-smokers in women.

VFA was notably high in female smokers, but the difference was not observed in men. Smoking habit is an important risk factor of visceral fat accumulation and progression of subclinical atherosclerosis in women.