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Comparison of the effect of ‘metabolically healthy but obese’ and ‘metabolically abnormal but not obese’ phenotypes on development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Chinese

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Abstract

The present study was designed to determine the prevalence of ‘metabolically healthy but obese’ (MHO) and ‘metabolically abnormal but not obese’ (MANO) phenotypes in Chinese population, and to investigate the association of these two phenotypes with the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD). A total of 2,764 subjects aged 30–90 were followed up over a mean period of 43.80 ± 11.25 months. The metabolic syndrome was defined according to the joint committee for developing Chinese guidelines on prevention and treatment of dyslipidemia in adults. Subjects with body fat percentage (BF %) >25 % for men or BF % >35 % for women were defined as being obese. The proportion of MHO and MANO phenotypes were 22.9, 7.6 % in men, and 26.2, 6.0 % in women, respectively. The MANO phenotype was associated with increased risk for diabetes both in men [hazard ratios (HR): 4.44 (1.21–16.26)] and women [HR: 8.68 (2.87–24.96)] after adjustment of age, serum total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), and family history of diabetes. This association held for CVD in women [HR: 2.87 (1.44–5.73)], but not in men after adjustment of age, serum TC, TG, and family history of CVD. No association was observed between the MHO phenotype and incident diabetes or CVD. MHO and MANO phenotypes are common in Chinese population. Metabolic risk factors appeared to play a more important role in the development of diabetes and CVD than body fat alone.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Drug Innovation Program of National Science and Technology Project (No. 2011ZX09307-001-02) and the Public Health Key Disciplines of Shanghai (No. 12GWZX0104).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Diabetes Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital, 600 Yishan Road, Shanghai, 200233, People’s Republic of China

    Deng Luo, Xiaowen Li, Dechao Yin, Ziwei Lin, Xuhong Hou, Chen Wang & Weiping Jia

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Diabetes Mellitus, 600 Yishan Road, Shanghai, 200233, People’s Republic of China

    Deng Luo, Fang Liu, Xiaowen Li, Dechao Yin, Ziwei Lin, Xuhong Hou, Chen Wang & Weiping Jia

  3. Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital, 600 Yishan Road, Shanghai, 200233, People’s Republic of China

    Deng Luo, Fang Liu, Ziwei Lin, Chen Wang & Weiping Jia

  4. Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Hui Liu

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  1. Deng Luo
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  2. Fang Liu
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  3. Xiaowen Li
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Correspondence to Chen Wang.

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Deng Luo and Fang Liu are contributed equally to this work.

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Luo, D., Liu, F., Li, X. et al. Comparison of the effect of ‘metabolically healthy but obese’ and ‘metabolically abnormal but not obese’ phenotypes on development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Chinese. Endocrine 49, 130–138 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12020-014-0444-2

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