People with excess visceral fat tissue suffer more age-related disease, develop those conditions earlier, and exhibit a higher mortality risk. But is this accelerated aging, an increased burden of the defined forms of damage and dysfunction that drive aging, or is it a different set of damaging processes? There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that being overweight does literally accelerate aging, such as the fact that greater amounts of visceral fat produce a greater burden of senescent cells, and studies such as the one noted here that correlate higher aging clock measures with the amount of visceral fat. But this isn't a concretely answered question.
Cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM), as one of the most prevalent and representative multimorbidity forms, is characterized by the coexistence of at least two cardiometabolic diseases (CMD), typically including coronary heart disease (CHD), type 2 diabetes (T2DM), and stroke. Obesity is widely recognized as a significant risk factor for CMM. A growing consensus holds that the accumulation of visceral adipose tissue is more deleterious to health than the expansion of subcutaneous adipose tissue. The body roundness index (BRI) is a novel anthropometric measure that integrates height and waist circumference (WC) to characterize body shape. Compared to the traditional body mass index (BMI), it provides a more accurate reflection of visceral fat distribution.
Using data from the UK Biobank, a nationwide cohort study was conducted using the available baseline BRI measurement. Biological aging was assessed using the Klemera-Doubal method for biological age and the phenotypic age algorithms. The association between the BRI and CMM was estimated using the Cox proportional hazards regression model, while the roles of biological aging were examined through interaction and mediation analyses.
During a median follow-up of 14.52 years, 6,156 cases of CMM were identified. A significant association was observed between the BRI and CMM. The hazard ratio (HR) for CMM was 3.72 for individuals in the highest quartile compared with those in the lowest quartile of the BRI. More importantly, the BRI demonstrated superior predictive performance relative to body mass index. Furthermore, the BRI exhibited additive interactions with accelerated biological aging on the risk of CMM, and accelerated biological aging partially mediated the association between the BRI and CMM. These findings provide evidence for the application of the BRI as a novel and readily accessible screening tool associated with CMM, suggesting that the effective management of visceral fat and biological aging deceleration may hold promise for reducing CMM risk.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/nu17081397
View the full article at FightAging
