In a recent study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , researchers investigated the independent associations of body fat percentage (BF%) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and the risk of future ischemic cardiovascular disease (CVD), including its main subtypes (ischemic stroke [IS] and myocardial infarction [MI]). While previous work has compared the accuracy of a combination of both metrics with body mass index [BMI], the current most frequently used obesity estimate, their independent predictive power remained hitherto unknown. Study: Waist-to-height ratio and body fat percentage as risk factors for ischemic cardiovascular disease: a prospective cohort study from UK Biobank .
Image Credit: crystal light / Shutterstock This study used a UK Biobank-derived sample cohort comprising 468,333 individuals followed over 12 years for their study. Study findings reveal that WHtR is linearly associated with CVD risk. Notably, the metric significantly outperforms currently existing central obesity measures such as waist-to-hip ratio [WHR] and waist circumference [WC]) in predicting subsequent ischemic CVD risk.
Contrasting previous hypotheses, BF% displayed poor predictive power, suggesting that its assumed predictive power was due to its correlation with WHtR and not its independent association with CVD. These findings suggest that WHtR may replace WHR and WC in population-wide obesity censuses and highlight visceral fat as a primary target in weight management in.
