Abstract
Hypertension is the most crucial single contributor to global burden of disease and mortality, while weight loss as a non-pharmacological strategy is recommended to reduce blood pressure. This study aims to examine the association between visceral adipose index (VAI) and hypertension in Chinese adults. Data were collected from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), consisting of 8374 apparently healthy participants aged ≥18 years in the 2009 CHNS for cross-sectional analysis, and 4275 participants at entry from 2009 to 2011 for cohort analysis. Height, weight, waist circumference, blood pressure (BP), and blood lipid were measured. Information of population characteristics, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and diet were determined by validated questionnaire. Higher VAI scores were significantly associated with higher BP levels and higher risk of hypertension after adjustment with potential confounders (all p-trend < 0.001). The adjusted hazard ratio of hypertension was 1.526 (95%CI: 1.194, 1.952; p-trend < 0.01) for participants in the highest quartile of VAI scores when compared with those in the lowest quartile after adjustment for age, physical activity, antihypertensive medication, total energy intake, salt intake, and other major lifestyle factors. VAI scores were significantly, longitudinally associated with hypertension development among apparently healthy Chinese adults.
Highlights
Hypertension is known as one of the three crucial risk factors shared by all non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [1], and the leading single contributor to disease burden and death worldwide [2,3]
Among the male subjects (n = 3911), there is no significant differences of educational level, total energy intake, salt intake, smoking and drinking habits among the subgroups according to the visceral adiposity index (VAI) scores
Compared with the participants who had lower VAI scores, those with higher VAI scores were less likely to reside in countryside, be older, have higher concentrations of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and have higher levels of physical activities, whereas were more likely to have higher BMI, waist circumference (WC), SBP, and diastolic BP (DBP), higher concentrations of FBG, TG, total cholesterol (TC), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), receive medications for hypertension
Summary
Hypertension is known as one of the three crucial risk factors (smoking, hypertension, and overweight) shared by all non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [1], and the leading single contributor to disease burden and death worldwide [2,3]. As a highly modifiable risk factor of CVDs [7], the prevention and management of hypertension are major public health challenge worldwide to be addressed. The associations of overweight/obesity and some other adiposity indicators with the risk of hypertension were previously reported in substantial cross-sectional and time-series studies [8,9,10,11], and losing weight, as one of the non-pharmacological strategies, is commonly recommended to lower BP [3]. VAI was introduced to be a surrogate indicator of adipose tissue function, which can more directly predict the progress and risk of CVDs [12,15]
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