Heart disease is a major cause of death worldwide and more so in people with diabetes. (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)
Contrary to the widely accepted norm that says Body Mass Index (BMI) is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular events in people with diabetes, a new study published in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) noted that it is actually fat mass index which increases the risk.
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Heart disease is a major cause of death worldwide, and obesity is a major risk factor. BMI, a common measure of obesity, has been recently shown to be an imperfect metric because it does not distinguish between lean muscle mass and fat mass. When issues related to obesity are studied, suitable metrics that describe obesity accurately are extremely important.
Fat mass index, not BMI, associated with cardiovascular disease risk in people with diabetes. (Source: File Photo)
For the study, researchers analysed data on 10,251 adults from the ACCORD study, a randomised controlled trial in the United States looking at diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The mean age was almost 63 years, and 62 per cent of participants were men. The researchers found that people with type 2 diabetes and higher fat mass were at increased risk of major cardiovascular events compared to people with lower fat mass. In contrast to previous research, the protective role of lean body mass was not observed in the research population with type 2 diabetes as a whole.
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“We found that the protective effect of lean body mass was observed in participants with a lean BMI of less than 16.7 kg/m2,” said Dr Xinqun Hu, Departments of Cardiovascular Medicine and Emergency Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Changsha, Hunan, China, with co-authors. “The increased risk of CVD in (type 2 diabetes) patients with lower BMI may be attributed to the adverse effect of lower lean body mass that overrides the positive effect of lower fat mass.”
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