Epicardial fat thickness in patients with prediabetes and correlation with other cardiovascular risk markers

Prediabetes is a condition between a normal metabolic state and diabetes mellitus, which includes impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), impaired fasting glucose (IFG), or both. Prediabetes is related with undesirable cardiovascular outcomes. Epicardial fat thickness (EFT) has been correlated with cardiovascular risk factors. We herein aimed to assess EFT in prediabetic patients.

We evaluated 64 patients with prediabetes and 30 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects. Demographic and anthropometric characteristics [age, sex, height, weight, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference (WC)] and laboratory findings [fasting plasma glucose (FPG), postprandial plasma glucose (PPG), hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), low density lipoprotein (LDL), high density lipoprotein (HDL), and triglycerides (TG)] were assessed. Transthoracic echocardiography was used to evaluate EFT.

There were no significant differences between the case and control groups in terms of age, gender, height, HDL, WC, systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP/DBP), or TG (p>0.05). Body weight, BMI, FPG, LDL, and, in particular, EFT were found to be significantly higher in the case group than control group (p<0.05). When compared with the control group, the median EFT was significantly higher in all prediabetic subgroups (IGT or IFG, p<0.001). However, no statistically significant difference was found between each case subgroup (p=0.795). When groups were adjusted according to age, sex, WC, and BMI with covariance test, the EFT remained increased in the prediabetes subgroups compared to the controls (p<0.001).

We found the EFT levels to be increased in all subgroups of prediabetic patients regardless of FPG and HbA1c. Furthermore, EFT directly correlated with the patients' BMI and WC.