| Title: | Contribution of genetics to visceral adiposity and its relation to cardiovascular and metabolic disease |
| Journal: | Nature Medicine |
| Published: | 9 Sep 2019 |
| Pubmed: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31501611/ |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-019-0563-7 |
| Citations: | 194 (84 in last 2 years) as of 8 Aug 2024 |
Publication 4600
WARNING: the interactive features of this website use CSS3, which your browser does not support. To use the full features of this website, please update your browser.
Abstract
Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) - fat stored around the internal organs - has been suggested as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic disease1-3, as well as all-cause, cardiovascular-specific and cancer-specific mortality4,5. Yet, the contribution of genetics to VAT, as well as its disease-related effects, are largely unexplored due to the requirement for advanced imaging technologies to accurately measure VAT. Here, we develop sex-stratified, nonlinear prediction models (coefficient of determination = 0.76; typical 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.74-0.78) for VAT mass using the UK Biobank cohort. We performed a genome-wide association study for predicted VAT mass and identified 102 novel visceral adiposity loci. Predicted VAT mass was associated with increased risk of hypertension, heart attack/angina, type 2 diabetes and hyperlipidemia, and Mendelian randomization analysis showed visceral fat to be a causal risk factor for all four diseases. In particular, a large difference in causal effect between the sexes was found for type 2 diabetes, with an odds ratio of 7.34 (95% CI = 4.48-12.0) in females and an odds ratio of 2.50 (95% CI = 1.98-3.14) in males. Our findings bolster the role of visceral adiposity as a potentially independent risk factor, in particular for type 2 diabetes in Caucasian females. Independent validation in other cohorts is necessary to determine whether the findings can translate to other ethnicities, or outside the UK.</p>
7 Authors
- Torgny Karlsson
- Mathias Rask-Andersen
- Gang Pan
- Julia Höglund
- Claes Wadelius
- Weronica E. Ek
- Åsa Johansson
Enabling scientific discoveries that improve human health