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Item #11
Fat
Location More Important Than Amount in CAD Risk
Stomach
fat increases risk more than overall or peripheral fat.
Among
women over 60 years of age, extra abdominal fat appears to increase
the risk of atherosclerosis more than either overall obesity or
peripheral fat mass, according to a report published in the April 1st
issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
These
findings suggest that "all fat is not the same in women,"
Dr. Robert Bonow, president of the American Heart Association, said in
a statement.
This
is not the first report to suggest that fat location is an important
determinant of cardiovascular health, lead author Dr. Laszlo B. Tanko,
from the Center for Clinical and Basic Research in Ballerup, Denmark,
and colleagues note.
Past
research has shown that excess abdominal fat, compared with fat
elsewhere in the body, can increase the risk of heart disease, type 2
diabetes and stroke in middle age.
Dr.
Tanko's group compared excess central fat with excess peripheral fat
as atherosclerosis risk factors. The authors measured body fat in 1356
women between the ages of 60 and 85 years, and assessed aortic
calcification on lateral radiographs.
The
researchers found that women with the highest degree of aortic
calcification also had the highest percentage of abdominal fat and low
levels of fat in other body regions. Surprisingly, the women with the
lowest levels of aortic calcification were generally obese, with
excess peripheral fat mass.
"The
present study demonstrated that in elderly women localization of fat
mass is more important for atherogenesis than obesity per se,"
the researchers write. "Our most important and somewhat
surprising finding is that peripheral fat mass may overrule the
adverse effects of visceral fat mass," Dr. Tanko said in a
statement.
The
percentage of abdominal fat also tended to be higher among women who
had already experienced a myocardial infarction, relative to those
with no heart disease, regardless of whether they had extra body fat
in other regions. Circulation
2003;107:000-000
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DO
YOU KNOW
Heart
attacks frequently occur from 4:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. due to higher
adrenaline amounts
released from the adrenal glands during the morning hours.
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