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Can the use of blood-based biomarkers in addition to anthropometric indices substantially improve the prediction of visceral fat volume as measured by magnetic resonance imaging?

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Abstract

Purpose

To investigate whether blood-based biomarkers can improve the prediction of visceral fat volume as measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and thus be used as proxies of visceral adiposity in large-scale epidemiological studies.

Methods

Whole-body MRI was performed to determine overall and regional body compartments in 542 participants aged 48–80 years (52 % men) of the Heidelberg cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. Anthropometric measures were taken, and clinical chemistry profiles including 15 routine biomarkers were obtained. Furthermore, nine novel biomarkers of visceral fat were assayed in a discovery sample of 100 participants. Multivariable regression models were calculated to assess associations between anthropometric variables, biomarkers, and visceral fat volume.

Results

The proportion of variance in visceral fat volume explained by anthropometric measures was 65.2 % in women and 60.8 % in men. By using blood-based biomarkers in addition to anthropometric indices, the variance in visceral fat volume explained could be increased by 4.8 % in women and 4.0 % in men. After backward selection, HbA1c, triglycerides, and adiponectin remained in the final multivariable regression model in women, while in men hsCRP, leukocytes, AST (GOT), GGT, LDL, and adiponectin remained in the final model.

Conclusions

In the present study, blood-based biomarkers moderately improved the prediction of visceral fat volume. This finding suggests that the underestimation of true associations between visceral fat and disease outcomes in epidemiological studies remains critical, even when using comprehensive sets of anthropometric and biomarker variables as proxies of visceral adiposity.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants of the EPIC-Heidelberg sub-study and the staff of the study center for their work during the sub-study. The present work was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant No. 01ER0809).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standards

The EPIC-Heidelberg study and the sub-study were both approved by the local ethics committee of the Medical Faculty in Heidelberg, and each participant gave written informed consent for the use of biological materials and questionnaire data for research purposes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cancer Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 581, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jasmine Neamat-Allah, Theron Johnson, Anika Hüsing, Birgit Teucher, Verena Katzke, Rudolf Kaaks & Tilman Kühn

  2. Division of Medical and Biological Informatics, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany

    Diana Nabers

  3. Division of Radiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Stefan Delorme

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  1. Jasmine Neamat-Allah
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  2. Theron Johnson
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Correspondence to Jasmine Neamat-Allah.

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Neamat-Allah, J., Johnson, T., Nabers, D. et al. Can the use of blood-based biomarkers in addition to anthropometric indices substantially improve the prediction of visceral fat volume as measured by magnetic resonance imaging?. Eur J Nutr 54, 701–708 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-014-0748-2

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