Waist and blood markers linked to heart and metabolic disease risk
Among 20,509 participants initially free of heart and metabolic disease, 783 developed multiple such conditions over a median 6.8 years.
The observational study pooled 20,509 participants initially free of cardiometabolic disease—conditions affecting the heart or how the body processes energy—from five aging cohorts in China, Costa Rica, England, South Africa and the United States. Researchers compared six measures combining blood sugar, a type of blood fat and body measurements.
All six measures were associated with higher risk of developing multiple such conditions. Waist-based measures had the largest pooled associations. For the waist-circumference measure, each standard-deviation increase—a step reflecting how widely values varied—was associated with a hazard ratio of 1.48, a comparison of disease onset rates. C-reactive protein, a blood marker of inflammation, identified a higher-risk subgroup. Adding it to a model already using the waist-circumference measure did little to improve the model’s ability to distinguish who would develop multiple conditions.
Why it matters
The findings support further evaluation of these combined measurements as risk markers for developing multiple heart and metabolic conditions in aging populations.
Caveats
This observational analysis identified associations, not whether the markers caused disease. The findings concerned people initially free of cardiometabolic disease, not those already living with it.
