Associations of Relative Fat Mass, a Novel Adiposity Indicator, with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Cardiovascular Disease: Data from SPECT-China

Wenqi Shen; Lingli Cai; Bin Wang; Yuying Wang; Ningjian Wang; Yingli Lu

doi:10.2147/DMSO.S423272

Associations of Relative Fat Mass, a Novel Adiposity Indicator, with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Cardiovascular Disease: Data from SPECT-China

Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2023 Aug 8:16:2377-2387. doi: 10.2147/DMSO.S423272. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Wenqi Shen^#¹, Lingli Cai^#¹, Bin Wang¹, Yuying Wang¹, Ningjian Wang¹, Yingli Lu¹

Affiliation

¹ Institute and Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to determine the associations of relative fat mass (RFM), a novel adiposity indicator, with the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and compared the disease discriminative ability of RFM with other common adiposity indicators in the general Chinese population.

Patients and methods: This cross-sectional study consisted of 11,532 adult participants from the SPECT-China study (2014-2016). We included RFM and six other adiposity indicators, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), visceral adiposity index (VAI), and lipid accumulation product (LAP). Binary logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between adiposity indicators and the prevalence of NAFLD and CVD. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the ability to screen NAFLD and CVD.

Results: After adjusting for confounding variables, RFM showed a strong association with the prevalence of NAFLD and CVD. In men, each 1-SD (standard deviation) increase in RFM was associated with more than 3-fold increased risk of NAFLD (OR: 4.33, 95% CI: 3.79-4.93) and 66% increased risk of CVD (OR: 1.66, 95% CI: 1.36-2.02); in women, per 1-SD increase in RFM was associated with about 4-fold increased risk of NAFLD (OR: 5.16, 95% CI: 4.62-5.77) and 26% increased risk of CVD (OR: 1.26, 95% CI: 1.08-1.47). ROC analysis showed that RFM and WHtR were the strongest predictors for CVD.

Conclusion: RFM was significantly associated with prevalent NAFLD and CVD in Chinese adults and might be considered a simple tool for disease prediction. Further large longitudinal studies are needed to verify our findings.

Keywords: anthropometric measures; cardiovascular disease; non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; obesity; relative fat mass.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82120108008, 82170870); Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (22015810500); The Major Science and Technology Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2019-01-07-00-01-E00059). The funders had no involvement in the execution, management, analysis, or interpretation of the study, or in the creation, evaluation, or approval of the publication.