Abstract
Purpose: Adiposity is one of the important determinants of blood pressure. The aim of this study is to evaluate the association between blood pressure and body composition indices throughout the whole lifespan of healthy adults.Patients and Methods: This study was from an ongoing cross-sectional survey of the Chinese health wherein data included basic physiological parameters. Partial Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the correlation between blood pressure and body composition indices. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to assess the association of body mass index, lean mass percent, and visceral fat rating against blood pressure in each age group.Results: In the whole population stratified by gender, while body mass index had the highest r-value of correlation with systolic blood pressure in both males (r = 0.296, p < 0.001) and females(r = 0.237, p < 0.001), and fat mass percent had the highest r-value of correlation with diastolic blood pressure in males (r = 0.351, p < 0.001) and females(r = 0.277, p < 0.001), the strength of association with blood pressure were similar across most of the body composition indices. In multiple linear regression analysis, both body mass index and visceral fat rating were positively while lean mass percent was negatively associated with blood pressure in all age groups in both genders, whereas all the association was weaker in the elderly compared to the younger.Conclusion: Maintain the total body fat in a favorable range and appropriately increase the body muscle mass is a strategy to reduce the occurrence of cardiovascular event by decreasing the risk of hypertension through the whole adult life.
Highlights
China has been undergoing major transitions in health trends toward major increases in chronic noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD)
We investigated the contribution of body composition measures (including body mass index (BMI), lean mass percent (LM%), and visceral fat rating (VFR) to the age-related alteration of blood pressure (BP) across ten 5-year age groups ranging from 18–79 years in a sample of healthy Chinese adults
We chose three representative indices, including BMI, VFR and LM%, which represent the status of general obesity, central obesity, and muscle mass, respectively. We found that both systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were closely associated with BMI, LM%, and VFR in each age group, and the association between BP and body composition indices was weaker in the elderly compared to the younger ages (Figures 2, 3)
Summary
China has been undergoing major transitions in health trends toward major increases in chronic noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD). It has been reported that even a decline of SBP at baseline by 2 mmHg is related to a 5% reduction of 16-year mortality from CVD (Ikeda et al, 2008). Mendelian randomization studies of BP associated with adiposity-related genetic variants (Timpson et al, 2009; Holmes et al, 2014) and controlled trials of weight loss interventions (Cutler, 1991; Stevens et al, 2001) have established the causal relationship between adiposity and BP. Regardless of age and other unmodifiable CVD risk factors such as sex and race, there are many risk factors that are manageable and can be controlled through lifestyle modification, including reduction of obesity (Stoner et al, 2012)
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