Metabolic Abnormalities, But Not Metabolically Healthy Obesity, Are Associated with Left Ventricular Hypertrophy

Obesity has been found to be a predictor of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). However, studies which divide obesity into metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) and metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO) to study the effect of obesity on LVH have been rare. The present study aims to make clear the effects of various obese phenotypes and metabolic abnormalities on LVH.

A total of 10,804 participants were involved in this cross-sectional study. "Obesity" and "metabolically healthy" were defined as BMI ≥ 25kg/m² and having none of the metabolic factors respectively.

It was found that metabolically unhealthy non-obesity (MUNO) (OR, 2.675; 95%CI, 1.603-4.462, P < 0.001) and MUO (OR, 9.067; 95%CI, 5.474-15.020, P<0.001) were significantly associated with LVH, while it went in reverse for MHO (OR, 1.968; 95%CI, 0.560-6.920, P=0.291), after adjustment for age, race, gender, educational status, physical activity, annual income, current smoking status, current drinking status, sleep duration and BMI. And after further adjustment for metabolic abnormalities, MUNO (OR, 0.567; 95%CI, 0.316-1.018, P=0.794) and MUO (OR, 0.632; 95%CI, 0.342-1.166, P=0.142) tended not to be associated with LVH any longer. However, among the five metabolic components of metabolic abnormalities, high blood pressure (OR, 4.358; 95%CI, 3.266-5.815, P<0.001) and high waist circumference (OR, 1.530; 95%CI, 1.139-2.054, P=0.005) were significantly associated with LVH.

Metabolic abnormalities, but not MHO, were significantly associated with LVH. In addition, metabolic abnormalities were probable to mediate the connection between MUNO/MUO and LVH.