(P15-003-24) Ethnic Differences in the Relationship Between Visceral Adiposity and Waist Circumference in Healthy Adults

Objectives: Central adiposity is an important indicator of cardiometabolic health. Several studies have indicated a strong correlation between visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and metabolic outcomes. Measurement of waist circumference (WC) using a measuring tape and that of VAT using the Dual X-ray energy absorptiometry (DXA) are commonly used techniques to estimate central adiposity. Although several studies suggest a strong correlation between WC and VAT, it is not known whether this differs by ethnicity, or age and Body Mass Index (BMI). The primary objective of this study was to examine this relationship according to ethnicity and also by age and BMI.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional analysis of secondary data. Participants had completed anthropometric measurements and body composition was assessed using the DXA. Pearson’s correlations were used to assess the strength of the correlation and P< 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: 107 participants were included in the analysis, of which 40 (37.4%) were female and 67 (62.6%) were male. The mean age was 37.1 ± 13.6 years; VAT mass 2.1 ± 1.5 lbs; BMI 28.3 ± 4.5 kg/m²; and WC 91.7 ± 12.7 cm. Not surprisingly, our results showed that increasing age was associated with higher levels of VAT (r = 0.49, p < 0.001) and that those with a higher BMI had greater VAT (r = 0.76, p < 0.001). Amongst different ethnicities, a significant positive correlation between VAT and WC was observed amongst the Asian ethnicity (r = 0.92, p = 0.028), Caucasian ethnicity (r = 0.75, p < 0.001), and South Asian Indian ethnicity (r = 0.83, p < 0.001). In contrast, no significant correlation was found in the African American ethnicity (r = 0.13, p = 0.664) or Hispanic participants (r = 0.84, p = 0.076).

Conclusions: Elevated visceral adiposity has several cardiometabolic implications, and often tape derived WC measures and DXA derived VAT measures are used to determine central adiposity. Our study findings suggest that in the African American and Hispanic populations the relationship between WC and VAT are not consistently observed as in other populations. This may have important implications for methodological assessment of body composition in these populations.

Funding Sources: Scientist Development Grant- American Heart Association as well as Drexel CNHP Seed Grant to Dr. Sukumar