Affiliation:
1. From the Divisions of Endocrinology (F.F.R.-F., A.N.F., M.T.Z.) and Nephrology (O.K., A.B.R.) and the Departments of Radiology (S.A.) and Preventive Medicine (S.R.G.F.), Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Abstract
Abstract
— —Visceral fat accumulation is associated with increased cardiovascular risk. Clinical evaluation of visceral fat is limited because of the lack of reliable and low-cost methods. To assess the correlation between ultrasonography and computed tomography (CT) for the evaluation of visceral fat, 101 obese women, age 50.5±7.7 years with a body mass index of 39.2±5.4 kg/m
2
, were submitted to ultrasonograph and CT scans. Visceral fat measured by ultrasonography, 1 cm above the umbilical knot, showed a high correlation with CT-determined visceral fat (
r
=0.67,
P
<0.0001). The ultrasonograph method showed good reproducibility with an intra-observer variation coefficient of <2%. Both ultrasonograph and CT visceral fat values were correlated with fasting insulin (
r
=0.29 and
r
=0.27,
P
<0.01) and plasma glucose 2 hours after oral glucose load (
r
=0.22 and
r
=0.34,
P
<0.05), indicating that ultrasonography is a useful method to evaluate cardiovascular risk. A significant correlation was also found between visceral fat by CT and serum sodium (
r
=0.18,
P
<0.05). A ultrasonograph-determined visceral-to-subcutaneous fat ratio of 2.50 was established as a cutoff value to define patients with abdominal visceral obesity. This value also identified patients with higher levels of plasma glucose, serum insulin and triglycerides and lower levels of HDL-cholesterol, which are metabolic abnormalities characteristic of the metabolic syndrome. Our data demonstrate that ultrasonography is a precise and reliable method for evaluation of visceral fat and identification of patients with adverse metabolic profile.
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Cited by
94 articles.
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