Accuracy of visceral adiposity indices and lipid accumulation products in the identification of adults at high cardiovascular risk

Abstract

Introduction: The lipid accumulation product (LAP) and visceral adipose index (VAI) are clinical markers of visceral obesity and were proposed as simple tools to estimate cardiovascular risk and mortality. The objective of this study was to analyze the accuracy of the VAI and LAP for high cardiovascular risk patients.

Methods: A cross-sectional observational study of accuracy was carried out in 193 patients of both sexes. In addition to the variables VAI and LAP, presence of comorbidities, education, level of physical activity and anthropometric data were obtained. Cardiovascular risk was determined by the Framingham score.

Results: No significant difference was observed in the sample in gender distribution (44.6% women; 55.4% men), 24.4% had low cardiovascular risk, 48.7% intermediate risk and 26.9% high cardiovascular risk. Linear regression analysis showed that VAI and LAP explain, respectively, only 2.4% and 5.2% of the variation in cardiovascular risk expressed by the Framingham score. The analysis of areas under the curve (AUC) for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) indicated a significant effect only of LAP to diagnose individuals with high cardiovascular risk, but with low sensitivity and specificity.

Conclusion: Our results indicate that VAI and LAP explain only a small percentage of the variation in the Framingham cardiovascular risk score. LAP index still deserves more attention in a cohort study, because, even with the limitations of a cross-sectional study, we observed an acceptable sensitivity for it so that the LAP can be used as a screening criterion for requesting more accurate tests.

Keywords: Cardiovascular risk; Lipid accumulation product; Obesidad; Obesity; Producto de acumulación de lípidos; Riesgo cardiovascular; Visceral adipose index; Índice de adiposidad visceral.