Neck circumference, visceral adiposity, and hypertension: does upper body adiposity outperforms visceral adiposity in terms of hypertension predictions?

Background: This study set up to determine which of the neck circumference (NC), as a predictor of upper body sub-cutaneous fat, or visceral adipose tissue, as an indicator of intra-abdominal fat mass, can be the better predictor of hypertension. Material and methods: 130 overweight/obese women took part in this cross-sectional study conducted in November 2017. Blood pressure, anthropometric measurements, and body composition were determined. Pearson’s correlation coefficients, multivariate logistic regression, and the area under the curve of the receiver operator characteristic curves analyses were performed. Results: Mean age, weight, and neck circumference were 39.93 ± 8.71 years, 74.26 ± 9.86 Kg, and 35.06 ± 1.74 cm, respectively. There was a significant correlation between neck circumference and visceral adipose tissue with systolic blood pressure (r = 0.32, p = 0.001) (r = 0.57, p < 0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (r = 0.23, p = 0.008) (r = 0.45, p < 0.001), in the respective order. According to the results of the ROC curve analysis, visceral adipose tissue and neck circumference predicted hypertension with an accuracy of 81 and 65 percent, respectively. In addition, the probability of having increased blood pressure increased with higher visceral adipose tissue (OR = 1.22, p < 0.001). Conclusions: According to our findings, abdominal obesity and high NC in implication with overweight or obesity can more exactly evaluate hypertension risk.