Fat tissue quantity, waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio in patients with chronic kidney disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

The BMI predicts mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the general population, while in patients with end-stage chronic kidney disease (CKD) a high BMI is associated with improved survival, a phenomenon referred to as the "obesity paradox". While BMI is easy to determine and helps to categorize patients, it does not differentiate between fat tissue, lean tissue and bone mass. As the BMI may be altered in CKD, e.g. by muscle wasting, we determined in this meta-analysis (i) the association of mortality with fat tissue quantity in CKD and (ii) the association of mortality with abdominal obesity (as measured by waist circumference (WC) or waist-to-hip ratio (WHR)) in CKD. We systematically reviewed databases for prospective or retrospective cohort studies. In eleven studies with 23,523 patients the association between mortality and high fat tissue quantity in CKD was calculated. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) for this association in the CKD group in the dialysis group 0.91 (CI 0.84- 0.98, p = 0.01) which is comparable to the HR for the association with BMI. The HR in patients without dialysis was 0.7 (95% CI 0.53- 0.93, p = 0.01), suggesting a better risk prediction of high fat tissue content with mortality as compared to higher BMI with mortality in patients with CKD without dialysis. Importantly, both BMI and fat tissue quantity in CKD are described by the "obesity paradox": the higher the fat tissue content or BMI, the lower the mortality risk. In thirteen studies with 55,175 patients the association between mortality and high WC or WHR in CKD (with or without dialysis) was calculated. We observed, that the HR in the WHR group was 1.31 (CI 1.08-1.58, p = 0.007), whereas the overall hazard ratio of both groups was 1.09 (CI 1.01-1.18, p = 0.03), indicating that a higher abdominal obesity as measured by WHR is associated with higher mortality in CKD. Our analysis suggests gender-specific differences, which need larger study numbers for validation. This meta-analysis confirms the obesity paradox in CKD using fat tissue quantity as measure and further shows that using abdominal obesity measurements in the routine in obese CKD patients might allow better risk assessment than using BMI or fat tissue quantity. Comparable to the overall population, here, the higher the WHR, the higher the mortality risk.

Keywords: Chronic kidney disease; Fat tissue content; Meta-analysis; Systematic review; Waist circumference.