Abdominal Obesity and the Risk of All-Cause, Cardiovascular, and Cancer Mortality: Sixteen Years of Follow-Up in US Women
Open accessAbstract
Background— Accumulating evidence indicates that abdominal adiposity is positively related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and some other diseases independently of overall adiposity. However, the association of premature death resulting from these diseases with abdominal adiposity has not been widely studied, and findings are inconsistent. Methods and Results— In a prospective cohort study of 44 636 women in the Nurses’ Health Study, associations of abdominal adiposity with all-cause and cause-specific mortality were examined. During 16 years of follow-up, 3507 deaths were identified, including 751 cardiovascular deaths and 1748 cancer deaths. After adjustment for body mass index and potential confounders, the relative risks across the lowest to the highest waist circumference quintiles were 1.00, 1.11, 1.17, 1.31, and 1.79 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.47 to 1.98) for all-cause mortality; 1.00, 1.04, 1.04, 1.28, and 1.99 (95% CI, 1.44 to 2.73) for CVD mortality; and 1.00, 1.18, 1.20, 1.34, and 1.63 (95% CI, 1.32 to 2.01) for cancer mortality (all P <0.001 for trend). Among normal-weight women (body mass index, 18.5 to <25 kg/m 2 ), abdominal obesity was significantly associated with elevated CVD mortality: Relative risk associated with waist circumference ≥88 cm was 3.02 (95% CI, 1.31 to 6.99) and for waist-to-hip ratio >0.88 was 3.45 (95% CI, 2.02 to 6.92). After adjustment for waist circumference, hip circumference was significantly and inversely associated with CVD mortality. Conclusions— Anthropometric measures of abdominal adiposity were strongly and positively associated with all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality independently of body mass index. Elevated waist circumference was associated with significantly increased CVD mortality even among normal-weight women.
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Waist circumference is associated with all-cause or cardiovascular mortality.
“growing evidence suggests that WC is associated with all-cause [7–9] or cardiovascular mortality [10].”
Waist circumference provides independent or additive value to body mass index for predicting obesity-related health risks.
“but also provides independent or additive value to BMI for predicting obesity-related health risks [7–10].”
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- Authors
- Zhang, C., Rexrode, K. M., van Dam, R. M., Li, T. Y., & Hu, F. B.
- Affiliations
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- From the Epidemiology Branch, Division of Epidemiology, Statistics, and Prevention Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Md (C.Z.); Division of Preventive Medicine (K.M.R.) and Channing Laboratory (R.M.v.D., F.B.H.), Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass; and Departments of Nutrition (R.M.v.D., T.Y.L., F.B.H.) and Epidemiology (F.B.H.), Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass.
- Venue
- Circulation
- Published
- 2008-04
- Volume
- 117
- Issue
- 13
- Pages
- 1658-1667
- ISSN
- 0009-7322 (ISSN-L)
- 1524-4539
- OpenAlex
- W2070559035
- Cited by
- 856
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 25 · 2025: 49 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 56 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 65 · 2020: 49 · 2019: 40 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 40 · 2016: 48 · 2015: 48 · 2014: 43 · 2013: 53 · 2012: 38
- FWCI
- 27.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Circulation (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (HL34594, R01HL034594)
- National Cancer Institute (CA-87969, P01CA087969)
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK058845, DK58845)
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer Risks and Factors
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Cardiovascular Disease and Adiposity
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Keywords
- abdominal obesity, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, hip circumference, cardiovascular mortality, cancer mortality, all-cause mortality, normal-weight women, anthropometric measures, body mass index, Nurses' Health Study
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Cardiovascular Diseases, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Middle Aged, Neoplasms, Obesity, Prospective Studies, Risk Factors, United States, Cohort Studies, Waist-Hip Ratio, Abdominal Fat
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