Artery remodeling and abdominal adiposity in nonobese postmenopausal women

Background/Objectives: We aimed to assess, in nonobese postmenopausal women, whether markers of central adiposity, especially waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), would be associated with vascular remodeling. Subject/Methods: We enrolled 263 postmenopausal nonobese women without metabolic syndrome or diabetes. The strongest anthropometric measure related to brachial artery diameter (BAD) was WHR. Therefore, we divided the population in tertiles according to WHR values. Women in third tertiles were older, with higher body mass index, had worse lipid profile and a higher BAD than women in the first and second tertiles. Results: An analysis of covariance confirmed that BAD was increased with increasing tertiles after correction for confounding variables. Conclusion: BAD, a surrogate measure of cardiovascular disease, was correlated to WHR in nonobese population; therefore, nonobese women with high WHR should be carefully considered because of a possible worse cardiovascular risk profile. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2010) 64, 1022-1024; doi:10.1038/ejcn.2010.131; published online 14 July 2010