Obesity as assessed by body adiposity index and multivariable cardiovascular disease risk

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Public Health
• Obesity Research

Background:

• Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronary heart disease (CHD) remain leading causes of mortality worldwide.
• Accurate prediction of CVD and CHD risk is crucial for effective prevention strategies.
• Various anthropometric measures are used to assess obesity, but their comparative predictive values for mortality differ.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the Body Adiposity Index (BAI) in predicting CVD and CHD mortality.
• To compare the predictive performance of BAI against Body Mass Index (BMI), Waist Circumference (WC), and Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR).
• To determine the effectiveness of these obesity measures after adjusting for established risk factors.

Main Methods:

• A prospective 15-year mortality follow-up study of 4175 Australian males.
• Exclusion criteria included pre-existing heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.
• Multivariable logistic regression was employed to analyze the association between obesity measures and CVD/CHD mortality, with and without adjustment for Framingham Risk Scores (FRS).

Main Results:

• The predictive ability of BAI for CVD and CHD mortality was not significant after adjustment for age and FRS.
• BMI also showed limited predictive significance after adjustments.
• Both WC and WHR were significant predictors of CVD and CHD mortality, maintaining significance after covariate adjustment.

Conclusions:

• While BAI may reflect body fat percentage, it proved ineffective in predicting CVD and CHD mortality in this cohort.
• WC and WHR emerged as superior and robust predictors of cardiovascular and coronary heart disease mortality compared to BAI and BMI.
• These findings highlight the importance of central adiposity measures for cardiovascular risk assessment.