The Association Between Abdominal Fat, Cardiorespiratory Fitness, and Clinical Markers of Metabolic Syndrome

Abstract

Our purpose was to determine the association between abdominal fat and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) on markers of metabolic syndrome (MetS) total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C), triglycerides (TG), glucose, and blood pressure. We conducted a retrospective study on 165 adults (108 men) in which correlations between waist girth (WG), CRF and blood variables were determined. The cohort was partitioned by gender into quartiles and again by WG and differences in markers of MetS were compared across quartiles by ANOVA and by ANCOVA to determine the influence of CRF. Males in the lowest WG quartile exhibited greater HDL-C and lower diastolic blood pressure vs. the highest quartile (p < 0.05). TG were lower in the lowest vs. the third and highest quartile (p < 0.05), and glucose was greater in the highest vs. the first and second quartiles (p < 0.05). Females in the second WG quartile exhibited higher HDL-C vs. the highest quartile, and TG, glucose, systolic and diastolic blood pressure were lower in the lowest vs. the highest quartile (p < 0.05). After adjusting for CRF, diastolic blood pressure across WG in males were no longer significant, and HLD-C and TG quartile differences were no longer significant in females. We confirm WG as an important correlate of clinical markers of MetS in adults. CRF mitigates relationships between WG and clinical markers of cardio-metabolic risk in men and women.