Epicardial fat thickness as arterial hypertension predictor in normotensive patients with abdominal obesity
Authors: Kuznetsova T , Druzhilov M 
Published: November 2020

Abstract

Objective
Arterial hypertension (HTN) is one of the most common diseases associated with obesity. Visceral obesity (VO) with dysfunctional visceral adipose tissue plays the main role in obesity induced HTN. Direct criteria of VO including echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness (EFT) may become an additional predictor of HTN.

Purpose
The aim was to assess the role of echocardiographic EFT (EEFT) as a predictor of HTN in normotensive patients with abdominal obesity (AO).

Methods
526 normotensive men (according to ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) without therapy) with AO (waist circumference (WC) &gt;94 cm) and SCORE &lt;5%, without cardiovascular diseases and diabetes mellitus were examined (age 45.1±5.0 years). The lipid and glucose profiles, creatinine, uric acid and C-reactive protein blood levels, albuminuria evaluation, echocardiography, carotid ultrasound, bifunctional ABPM were performed. The values of EEFT ≥75 percentile for persons 35–45 years and 46–55 years were 4.8 mm and 5.8 mm respectively. These values used as epicardial VO criteria. Patients with subclinical carotid atherosclerosis due to the lipid-lowering therapy administration (n=98) were excluded from the follow-up. Re-examination with ABPM was conducted on average through 46.3±5.1 months. Data were summarized as mean ± standard error, statistical analysis conducted with paired two-tailed t-tests, Pearson χ2 criterion and multivariate regression analysis.

Results
Data of 406 persons were available for analysis. HTN as average daily blood pressure ≥130/80 mm Hg was detected in 157 (38.7%) patients. These patients were characterized by initially higher values of age (45.9±4.6 years vs 44.3±4.9 years, p&lt;0.001), waist circumference (106.9±7.3 cm vs 104.2±7.3 cm, p&lt;0.001), body mass index (BMI) (32.0±3.3 kg/m2 vs 30.9±3.2 kg/m2, p&lt;0.001), average daily systolic and diastolic blood pressure (120.7/74.5±4.6/3.4 mm Hg vs 118.2/73.2±5.5/3.9 mm Hg, p&lt;0.001), EEFT (5.2±0.7 mm vs 4.4±1.0 mm, p&lt;0.001). The epicardial VO was initially detected in 95 (23.3%) patients. In patients with HTN the initial prevalence of epicardial VO was greater (58.0% vs 23.3%, p&lt;0.001). As predictors for the multivariate regression analysis the clinical and laboratory examinations data and EEFT were evaluated. According to the results a mathematical model for estimating the probability HTN was obtained: 0.696*fasting blood glucose + 0.198*systolic BP + 2.844*EFT – 40.166 (constant). Among these predictors EEFT was characterized by the highest standardized regression coefficient (0.302, p&lt;0.001) (0.295, p&lt;0.01 for fasting blood glucose, 0.035, p&lt;0.001 for systolic BP). The Hosmer-Lemeshow test value was 0.863, the total percentage of correct classifications was 86%, the area under the ROC-curve was 0.913.

Conclusions
EEFT (4.8 mm for persons 35–45 years and 5.8 mm for persons 46–55 years) may be an additional predictor of HTN in normotensive patients with AO.

Funding Acknowledgement
Type of funding source: None