People with pockets of fat hidden inside their muscles are at a higher risk of dying or being hospitalised from a heart attack or heart failure, regardless of their body mass index, according to new research.
This is the first study to comprehensively investigate the effects of fatty muscles on heart disease. The new finding adds evidence that existing measures, such as body mass index or waist circumference, are inadequate to accurately evaluate the risk of heart disease for all people.
The new study was led by Professor Viviany Taqueti, Director of the Cardiac Stress Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Faculty at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
She said: “Obesity is now one of the biggest global threats to cardiovascular health, yet body mass index — our main metric for defining obesity and thresholds for intervention — remains a controversial and flawed marker of cardiovascular prognosis. This is especially true in women, where high body mass index may reflect more ‘benign’ types of fat.
“Intermuscular fat can be found in most muscles in the body, but the amount of fat can vary widely between different people. In our research, we analyse muscle and different types of fat to understand how body composition can influence the small blood vessels or ‘microcirculation’ of the heart, as well as future risk of heart failure, heart attack and death.”
The new research included 669 people who were being evaluated at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital for chest pain and/or shortness of breath and found to have no evidence of obstructive coronary artery disease.
Patients were followed up for around six years, and researchers recorded whether any patients died or were hospitalised for a heart attack or heart failure.
Researchers found that people with higher amounts of fat stored in their muscles were more likely to have damage to the tiny blood vessels that serve the heart (coronary microvascular dysfunction or CMD), and they were more likely to go on to die or be hospitalised for heart disease.
(With inputs from ANI)
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