Visceral adiposity and high waist-to-hip ratio predict the future development of insulin resistance, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease independent of BMI.
The relationship between obesity and insulin resistance, while well recognized for many years, has nonetheless been confusing since not all obese individuals have insulin resistance (1) and because insulin resistance occurs in individuals who have BMIs that are within the normal or mildly overweight categories (2). Early attempts to understand the relationships between obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease focused on the waist-to-hip ratio as a means of distinguishing those individuals who were at increased risk from those who were not (3,4). A high waist-to-hip ratio is a surrogate for masculine distribution of obesity (central obesity). Cross-sectional studies by Kissebah et al. (5) and Krotkiewski et al. (6) in the 1980s demonstrated that hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, hyperinsulinemia, and glucose intolerance were increased in subjects with a high waist-to-hip ratio. Long-term longitudinal population-based studies of men (13.5 years) and women (12 years) in Gothenburg, Sweden, showed that the waist-to-hip ratio was a predictor of the future development of diabetes, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, stroke, and death independent of BMI (3,4). Technology developed in the 1990s, including computer tomography scans and MRI, made it possible to precisely measure specific adipose tissue depots such as total body adipose tissue mass, abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue mass, visceral adipose tissue mass, and hepatic and intramuscular triglyceride content (7,8). Utilizing those techniques, many studies have examined the relationship between total adipose tissue, abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue, and visceral adipose tissue mass and insulin resistance, the components of the metabolic syndrome, and the development of type 2 diabetes or clinical cardiovascular events (9–21). Despite the much smaller size of the visceral adipose tissue depot compared with the total subcutaneous adipose tissue depot or total adiposity, many investigations demonstrated that the visceral adipose tissue mass and not …
Lebovitz et al. (Thu,) conducted a editorial in Insulin resistance and obesity. Visceral adiposity was evaluated. Visceral adiposity and high waist-to-hip ratio predict the future development of insulin resistance, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease independent of BMI.
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