Body fat distribution and risk of incident ischemic stroke in men and women aged 50 to 74 years from the general population. The KORA Augsburg cohort study

Karl Zahn; Jakob Linseisen; Margit Heier; Annette Peters; Barbara Thorand; Franziska Nairz; Christa Meisinger

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0191630

Body fat distribution and risk of incident ischemic stroke in men and women aged 50 to 74 years from the general population. The KORA Augsburg cohort study

PLoS One. 2018 Feb 5;13(2):e0191630. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191630. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Karl Zahn^{1

2}, Jakob Linseisen^{1

3}, Margit Heier¹, Annette Peters¹, Barbara Thorand¹, Franziska Nairz¹, Christa Meisinger^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Institute of Epidemiology II, Neuherberg, Germany.
² Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (IBE), Munich, Germany.
³ Chair of Epidemiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, UNIKA-T, Augsburg, Germany.

Abstract

Background: It remains controversial whether measures of general or abdominal adiposity are better risk predictors for ischemic stroke. Furthermore, so far it is unclear whether body fat mass index (BFMI) and fat free mass index (FFMI) are risk predictors for ischemic stroke. This study examined the sex-specific relevance of body mass index (BMI), BROCA Index, waist circumference (WC), waist-height ratio (WHtR), BFMI and FFMI for the development of ischemic stroke in a Caucasian population.

Material and methods: The prospective population-based cohort study was based on 1917 men and 1832 women (aged 50 to 74 years) who participated in the third (1994/95) or fourth (1999/2001) MONICA/KORA Augsburg survey. Subjects were free of stroke at baseline. Standardized anthropometric and bioelectric impedance measurements were obtained at baseline. Hazard ratios (HR) were estimated from Cox proportional hazard models.

Results: During a median follow-up of 9.3 years 128 ischemic strokes occurred in men and 81 in women, respectively. Coded as quartiles WC and WHtR were significantly associated with incident stroke in multivariable analyses in women (comparing the 4th vs. the bottom quartile), but none of the adiposity measures was significantly associated with incident stroke in multivariable adjusted analyses in men. When anthropometric measures were used as continuous variables, these findings were confirmed. After multivariable adjustment the associations between obesity measures and incident ischemic stroke were statistically significant only for WC (HR 1.39, 95%CI 1.12-1.72) and WHtR in women (HR 1.39, 95%CI 1.12-1.73) per increase of 1 standard deviation. In both sexes the measures BFMI and FFMI were no independent predictors for incident ischemic stroke.

Conclusions: Abdominal obesity measures are independent predictors of incident ischemic stroke in women but not in men from the general adult population. Thus, it may be of particular importance for women to prevent central obesity in order to reduce their risk of ischemic stroke.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adipose Tissue*
Aged
Body Composition*
Body Mass Index
Cohort Studies
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Stroke / etiology*
White People

Grants and funding

The KORA research platform (KORA, Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg) and the KORA Augsburg studies are financed by the Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology and by the State of Bavaria. Furthermore, KORA research was supported within the Munich Center of Health Science (MC Health), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München as part of LMUinnovativ. This research was a master's thesis of Karl Zahn and was not supported by a grant.