Somatotype and Its Impact on Asymptomatic Target Organ Damage in the Elderly Chinese: The Northern Shanghai Study

Abstract

Objective

To investigate the relationship between asymptomatic target organ damage (TOD) and different somatotypes in a population of elderly from Chinese community-dwelling.

Methods

A total of 2098 Chinese senior residents from northern Shanghai older than 65 years were recruited in the research. The following somatotype parameters were recorded and analyzed: body mass index, waist circumference, hip circumference, and waist-hip ratio were recorded and calculated. Asymptomatic TOD, including urine albumin/creatinine ratio, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), intima-media thickness (IMT), left ventricular mass index (LVMI), left ventricular diastolic function, and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) was recorded using the MyLab30 Gold CV system and SphygmoCor.

Results

Of all 2098 residents, 817 (38.9%) were overweight and 289 (13.8%) were obese. All somatotype measures were significantly correlated with TOD parameters (p<0.05). After adjustment for age and male gender, in total population, LVMI (p<0.001), cardiac diastolic function (E/Ea, p<0.001), PWV (p<0.001), eGFR (p=0.03), and urine albumin/creatinine ratio (p<0.001) changed gradually and significantly correlated with increasing BMI values. Obesity and overweight were independently related to the incidence of LVH, LVDD, artery stiffness, carotid arterial plaque, and microalbuminuria.

Conclusion

The incidence of asymptomatic TOD was significantly correlated with overweight and obesity, especially in women, whereas the underweight may favor in the prevention of TOD.

Keywords:

• Chinese elderly cardiovascular risk

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to all the participants and investigators of the Northern Shanghai Study. Jing Xiong and Yunyun Qian should be considered joint first author.

Data Sharing Statement

Research data are not shared.

Ethics Statement

This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants signed the informed consent.

Disclosure

The abstract of this paper was presented at the 2018 International Society of Hypertension Conference as a conference talk with interim findings. The poster’s abstract was published in “Poster Abstracts” in journal of hypertension: Hyperlink with DOI: 10.1097/01.hjh.0000548409.69528.da.

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.