Body composition and body fat distribution in relation to later risk of acute myocardial infarction: a Danish follow-up study.

INTRODUCTION: Obesity is a modifiable risk factor for acute myocardial infarction (MI), but lean body mass (LBM) may also be an important factor. Low LBM may increase the risk of MI and LBM may modify the effect of obesity on MI. Thus, the inability of the classical anthropometric measures to evaluate LBM may lead to misclassification of MI risk in both lean and obese persons. We investigated the associations between incident MI and bioelectrical impedance analyses (BIA) derived measures of body composition in combination with body mass index (BMI) and anthropometric measures of body fat distribution. METHODS AND RESULTS: From 1993 to 1997, 27 148 men and 29 863 women, aged 50 to 64 year, were recruited into the Danish prospective study Diet, Cancer and Health. During 11.9 years of follow-up we identified 2028 cases of incident MI (1487 men and 541 women). BMI, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference and BIA of body composition including body fat mass (BFM), body fat percentage and LBM were measured at baseline. We used Cox proportional hazard models with age as time axis and performed extensive control for confounding. Weight, BMI, classical estimates of abdominal obesity and BIA estimates of obesity showed significant positive associations with incident MI. However, BFM adjusted for WC showed no association. Low LBM was associated with a higher risk of incident MI in both genders, and high LBM was associated with a higher risk in men. CONCLUSION: Obesity was positively associated with MI. Estimates of obesity achieved by BIA seemed not to add additional information to classical anthropometric measures regarding MI risk. Both high and low LBM may be positively associated with MI.

General and abdominal adiposity and risk of death in Europe.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have relied predominantly on the body-mass index (BMI, the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) to assess the association of adiposity with the risk of death, but few have examined whether the distribution of body fat contributes to the prediction of death. METHODS: We examined the association of BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio with the risk of death among 359,387 participants from nine countries in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). We used a Cox regression analysis, with age as the time variable, and stratified the models according to study center and age at recruitment, with further adjustment for educational level, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and height. RESULTS: During a mean follow-up of 9.7 years, 14,723 participants died. The lowest risks of death related to BMI were observed at a BMI of 25.3 for men and 24.3 for women. After adjustment for BMI, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio were strongly associated with the risk of death. Relative risks among men and women in the highest quintile of waist circumference were 2.05 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.80 to 2.33) and 1.78 (95% CI, 1.56 to 2.04), respectively, and in the highest quintile of waist-to-hip ratio, the relative risks were 1.68 (95% CI, 1.53 to 1.84) and 1.51 (95% CI, 1.37 to 1.66), respectively. BMI remained significantly associated with the risk of death in models that included waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that both general adiposity and abdominal adiposity are associated with the risk of death and support the use of waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio in addition to BMI in assessing the risk of death.