SUITABILITY OF VISCERAL ADIPOSITY INDEX AS A MARKER FOR CARDIOMETABOLIC RISKS IN JORDANIAN ADULTS.

INTRODUCTION

visceral adiposity index (VAI) has recently been proposed as a predictor of cardiometabolic risk, but its usefulness has not been confirmed.

OBJECTIVES

to evaluate the association between VAI and conventional adiposity and cardiometabolic risk indices and examine VAI risk predictive ability and compare it with other adiposity indices.

METHODS

a total of 1 622 Jordanian adults, 686 men and 936 women, aged 20-80 years were included this study. VAI, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio (WHR), waist-height ratio (WHtR) were examined and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides (TG), fasting serum glucose (FSG), systolic (SBP), and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure were determined. Associations and age-and gender specific distribution and differences were evaluated. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and area under curve (AUC) were used for risk predictive ability comparison.

RESULTS

VAI of women (6.82±6.43) was higher than of men (4.15±4.62). VAI severity increased with age in a dose-response trend (p<0.001) in both genders. Women had higher prevalence than men of high risks of VAI and all adiposity and cardiometabolic indices. VAI markedly associated with TG, HDL-C, FSG, SBP and DBP or WHR, WC, WHtR and BMI in respective order of correlation potency for cardiometabolic or adiposity risk indices. In men and women respectively, the largest AUC was for VAI (0.79 vs. 0.77), followed by WHR (0.73 vs. 0.75), WC (0.69 vs. 0.74), WHtR (0.65 vs. 0.71) and BMI (0.53 vs. 0.51).

CONCLUSIONS

the findings suggest that VAI potentially associates with cardiometabolic risks and proves to be superior to other adiposity indices in predicting such risk.