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Pericardial Fat and the Risk of Heart Failure
Satish Kenchaiah1, Jingzhong Ding2, J Jeffrey Carr3
1Cardiovascular Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA; Laboratory for Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology
|May 28, 2021
Summary
Pericardial fat volume (PFV) is linked to increased heart failure (HF) risk, especially HF with preserved ejection fraction. This association is significant in both women and men across diverse ethnic groups.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Cardiovascular Disease Research
- Obesity and Health
Background:
- Obesity is a known risk factor for heart failure (HF).
- The specific impact of pericardial fat on the incidence of HF remains unclear.
- Understanding this relationship is crucial for cardiovascular risk assessment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between pericardial fat volume (PFV) and the development of newly diagnosed heart failure (HF).
- To explore potential sex differences in this association.
Main Methods:
- Utilized cardiac computed tomography to measure PFV in 6,785 participants from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).
- Employed Cox proportional hazards regression to analyze PFV as a continuous and dichotomous variable.
- Adjusted for various factors including anthropometrics, abdominal fat, inflammation, and hemodynamic stress markers.
Main Results:
- Over 90,686 person-years, 385 participants developed incident HF.
- Increased PFV was associated with a higher risk of HF in both women and men, with a stronger effect observed in women.
- Elevated PFV was predominantly linked to an increased risk of HF with preserved ejection fraction.
Conclusions:
- Pericardial fat volume is an independent predictor of incident heart failure.
- The association between PFV and HF risk is significant in both sexes and across diverse ethnicities.
- PFV is particularly associated with HF with preserved ejection fraction.
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