Comparison of neck and waist circumferences for identifying subclinical atherosclerosis in a community-based population.

Abstract

Recently, neck circumference (NC) has been proposed as a new anthropometric index for assessing upper body fat, which has a close relationship with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and their risk factors. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of NC in identifying subclinical atherosclerosis, an early stage of CVD, in a Shanghai community population. We enrolled 1387 subjects (486 men and 901 women) from the Shanghai community. Anthropometric measurements, including NC and waist circumference (WC), were taken for all subjects. Carotid intima media thickness (C-IMT) was determined by carotid ultrasonography. Elevated NC was defined as NC ≥ 38.5cm in men and NC ≥ 34.5cm in women. There was a positive correlation between NC and C-IMT, and this association remained significant even after adjustment for BMI (P=.015; P=.038). After adjusting for confounding factors, the additional risks of elevated C-IMT were 58% and 33% for each SD increase in NC in men and women, respectively (P=.003; P=.009). The NC cutoffs could identify 53.38% of men and 43.07% of women with elevated C-IMT, which was comparable to the identification of 56.08% of men and 42.57% of women with elevated C-IMT using WC cutoffs (P=.218; P=.920). NC was significantly and positively correlated with C-IMT. The cutoffs of NC could be helpful to identifying subclinical atherosclerosis in a community-based population, and the identification showed no difference compared to that using WC cutoffs.