Body Fat Distribution Is Predictive of All-Cause Mortality

An increased visceral-to-subcutaneous fat area ratio (VSR) is more predictive of all-cause mortality than overall adiposity, according to a recent study.

Little is known about the relationship between directly measured body fat and all-cause mortality.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT
Nutritional Pearls: Low-Carb Diets Do Not Burn Fat
Cardiometabolic Disease and Obesity: A Q+A With Dr. Donna Ryan
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To investigate this relationship, the researchers assessed 36,656 patients who had undergone an abdominal computed tomography scan during a health check-up at a single health care center from 2007 to 2015. The researchers had included 32,593 patients with data regarding vital status as of May 2016 in the final analysis. Follow-up lasted a mean 5.7 years.

The researchers defined the primary outcome as all-cause mortality. The main factors evaluated were visceral fat area, subcutaneous fat area, and VSR.

A total of 253 patients had died during follow-up. Results indicated that increased subcutaneous fat area was associated with decreased all-cause mortality, while an increased visceral fat area and VSR were associated with increased all-cause mortality. The researchers also found that subcutaneous fat area and VSR showed a larger area under the curve, compared with the predictive power of body mass index.

According to Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis, increased subcutaneous fat area was associated with decreased risk of all-cause mortality, and VSR was associated with increased risk. However, multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis showed that VSR was independently associated with all-cause mortality. This relationship was paralleled by the harmful effect of increased VSR on metabolic profiles.

“Increased VSR was an independent predictor of all-cause mortality,” the researchers concluded. “This suggests that the location of fat deposits may be more important than the actual amount of body fat.”

—Christina Vogt

Reference:

Lee SW, Son JY, Kim JM, et al. Body fat distribution is more predictive of all-cause mortality than overall adiposity [Published online August 11, 2017]. Diabetes Obes Metabol. doi:10.1111/dom.13050.