Abdominal obesity vs general obesity for identifying arterial stiffness, subclinical atherosclerosis and wave reflection in healthy, diabetics and hypertensive

A cross-sectional descriptive study was made of 305 individuals (diabetics 32.8%, hypertensive subjects 37.0% and healthy individuals 30.2%). Measurements: Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), body fat percentage (BFP) and waist/height ratio (WHtR). Arterial stiffness was assessed according to pulse wave velocity (PWV), intima-media thickness of the common carotid artery (C-IMT), augmentation index (central and peripheral), ankle-brachial index (ABI), and central and peripheral pulse pressure.WC and WHtR showed a positive correlation to PWV and C-IMT in the studied groups. After adjusting for age, gender, high sensitivity c-reactive protein, serum glucose and the presence of diabetes, hypertension, smoking, dyslipidemia, antidiabetic drugs, lipid-lowering drugs, and atherosclerotic plaques, it was seen that for every 0.1 point increase in WHtR, and for every cm increase in WC, the PWV increased 0.041 and 0.029 m/sec, and C-IMT increased 0.001 mm and 0.001 mm, respectively.The measures of abdominal obesity (WHtR and WC) correlates better than BMI and BFP with arterial stiffness evaluated by PWV, and with subclinical atherosclerosis evaluated by C-IMT, independently of the presence of diabetes or hypertension.Clinical Trials.gov Identifier: NCT01325064Obesity is a determinant factor in the development of cardiovascular diseases, and is associated to an increased incidence of hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiac target organ damage [1-4].Some studies have shown measures of abdominal obesity such as waist circumference (WC), waist to hip ratio and waist/height ratio (WHtR) to be the parameters best correlated with cardiovascular disease and mortality [5-13]. In contrast, other studies have not found sufficient evidence that these measures of abdominal obesity are superior to body mass index (BMI) in predicting cardiovascular and cardiometabolic risk [14-21].The vascular structure and function can be assessed through the indices of subclinic