American Journal of Cardiology
Volume 104, Issue 4 , Pages 543-547 , 15 August 2009

Relation of Subcutaneous and Visceral Adipose Tissue to Coronary and Abdominal Aortic Calcium (from the Framingham Heart Study)

  • Caroline S. Fox, MD, MPH

      Affiliations

    • National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts
    • Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author: Tel: (508) 935-3447; fax: (508) 626-1262
    • ,
  • Shih-Jen Hwang, PhD

      Affiliations

    • National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts
    • ,
  • Joseph M. Massaro, PhD

      Affiliations

    • Department of Mathematics, Boston University and Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
    • ,
  • Kathrin Lieb, MD

      Affiliations

    • National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts
    • ,
  • Ramachandran S. Vasan, MD

      Affiliations

    • National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts
    • ,
  • Christopher J. O'Donnell, MD, MPH

      Affiliations

    • National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts
    • Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
    • ,
  • Udo Hoffmann, MD, MPH

      Affiliations

    • Cardiac MR PET CT Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Received 20 December 2008 ,Revised 6 April 2009 ,Accepted 6 April 2009.

References 

  1. Poirier P, Giles TD, Bray GA, Hong Y, Stern JS, Pi-Sunyer FX, et al. Obesity and cardiovascular disease: pathophysiology, evaluation, and effect of weight loss: an update of the 1997 American Heart Association scientific statement on obesity and heart disease from the Obesity Committee of the Council on Nutrition, physical activity, and metabolism. Circulation. 2006;113:898–918
  2. Cassidy AE, Bielak LF, Zhou Y, Sheedy PF, Turner ST, Breen JF, et al. Progression of subclinical coronary atherosclerosis: does obesity make a difference?. Circulation. 2005;111:1877–1882
  3. Mahoney LT, Burns TL, Stanford W, Thompson BH, Witt JD, Rost CA, et al. Coronary risk factors measured in childhood and young adult life are associated with coronary artery calcification in young adults: the Muscatine study. J Am Coll Cardiol. 1996;27:277–284
  4. Allison MA, Michael WC. Body morphology differentially predicts coronary calcium. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2004;28:396–401
  5. Lee CD, Jacobs DR, Schreiner PJ, Iribarren C, Hankinson A. Abdominal obesity and coronary artery calcification in young adults: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86:48–54
  6. Wong ND, Hsu JC, Detrano RC, Diamond G, Eisenberg H, Gardin JM. Coronary artery calcium evaluation by electron beam computed tomography and its relation to new cardiovascular events. Am J Cardiol. 2000;86:495–498
  7. Arad Y, Spadaro LA, Goodman K, Lledo-Perez A, Sherman S, Lerner G, et al. Predictive value of electron beam computed tomography of the coronary arteries (19-month follow-up of 1173 asymptomatic subjects). Circulation. 1996;93:1951–1953
  8. Detrano R, Guerci AD, Carr JJ, Bild DE, Burke G, Folsom AR, et al. Coronary calcium as a predictor of coronary events in four racial or ethnic groups. N Engl J Med. 2008;358:1336–1345
  9. Fox CS, Massaro JM, Hoffmann U, Pou KM, Maurovich-Horvat P, Liu CY, et al. Abdominal visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue compartments: association with metabolic risk factors in the Framingham Heart Study. Circulation. 2007;116:39–48
  10. Zhang C, Rexrode KM, van Dam RM, Li TY, Hu FB. Abdominal obesity and the risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality: sixteen years of follow-up in US women. Circulation. 2008;117:1658–1667
  11. Kim DJ, Bergstrom J, Barrett-Connor E, Laughlin GA. Visceral adiposity and subclinical coronary artery disease in elderly adults: Rancho Bernardo Study. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2008;16:853–858
  12. Dawber TR, Kannel WB, Lyell LP. An approach to longitudinal studies in a community: the Framingham Heart Study. Ann NY Acad Sci. 1963;107:539–556
  13. Shurtleff D. Some characteristics related to the incidence of cardiovascular disease and death: Framingham Study, 18-year follow-up (Section 30). In:  Kannel WB,  Fordon T editor. The Framingham Study: An Epidemiological Investigation of Cardiovascular Disease (DHEW publication no. (NIH) 74-599). Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; 1973;
  14. Splansky GL, Corey D, Yang Q, Atwood LD, Cupples LA, Benjamin EJ, et al. The Third Generation Cohort of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study: design, recruitment, and initial examination. Am J Epidemiol. 2007;165:1328–1335
  15. Maurovich-Horvat P, Massaro J, Fox CS, Moselewski F, O'Donnell CJ, Hoffmann U. Comparison of anthropometric, area- and volume-based assessment of abdominal subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue volumes using multi-detector computed tomography. Int J Obes. 2007;31:500–506
  16. Rosito GA, Massaro JM, Hoffmann U, Ruberg FL, Mahabadi AA, Vasan RS, et al. Pericardial fat, visceral abdominal fat, cardiovascular disease risk factors, and vascular calcification in a Community-Based Sample (The Framingham Heart Study). Circulation. 2008;117:605–613
  17. Hoffmann U, Siebert U, Bull-Stewart A, Achenbach S, Ferencik M, Moselewski F, et al. Evidence for lower variability of coronary artery calcium mineral mass measurements by multi-detector computed tomography in a community-based cohort—consequences for progression studies. Eur J Radiol. 2006;57:396–402
  18. Hoffmann U, Massaro JM, Fox CS, Manders E, O'Donnell CJ. Defining normal distributions of coronary artery calcium in women and men (from the Framingham Heart Study). Am J Cardiol. 2008;102:1136–1141
  19. Alexandersen P, Tanko LB, Bagger YZ, Jespersen J, Skouby SO, Christiansen C. Associations between aortic calcification and components of body composition in elderly men. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2006;14:1571–1578
  20. Tanko LB, Bagger YZ, Alexandersen P, Larsen PJ, Christiansen C. Central and peripheral fat mass have contrasting effect on the progression of aortic calcification in postmenopausal women. Eur Heart J. 2003;24:1531–1537
  21. Golledge J, Jayalath R, Oliver L, Parr A, Schurgers L, Clancy P. Relationship between CT anthropometric measurements, adipokines and abdominal aortic calcification. Atherosclerosis. 2008;197:428–434

 This work was supported by Grant N01-HC-25195 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Vasan was supported in part by Grants 2K24HL04334 and R01-DK-080739 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.

PII: S0002-9149(09)00922-9

doi: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2009.04.019

American Journal of Cardiology
Volume 104, Issue 4 , Pages 543-547 , 15 August 2009

Article Tools