Adiposity and NMR-measured lipid and metabolic biomarkers among 30,000 Mexican adults.

BACKGROUND

Adiposity is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in part due to effects on blood lipids. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides direct information on >130 biomarkers mostly related to blood lipid particles.

METHODS

Among 28,934 Mexican adults without chronic disease and not taking lipid-lowering therapy, we examine the cross-sectional relevance of body-mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-hip ratio (WHR), and hip circumference (HC) to NMR-measured metabolic biomarkers. Confounder-adjusted associations between each adiposity measure and NMR biomarkers are estimated before and after mutual adjustment for other adiposity measures.

RESULTS

Markers of general (ie, BMI), abdominal (ie, WC and WHR) and gluteo-femoral (ie, HC) adiposity all display similar and strong associations across the NMR-platform of biomarkers, particularly for biomarkers that increase cardiometabolic risk. Higher adiposity associates with higher levels of Apolipoprotein-B (about 0.35, 0.30, 0.35, and 0.25 SD higher Apolipoprotein-B per 2-SD higher BMI, WHR, WC, and HC, respectively), higher levels of very low-density lipoprotein particles (and the cholesterol, triglycerides, and phospholipids within these lipoproteins), higher levels of all fatty acids (particularly mono-unsaturated fatty acids) and multiple changes in other metabolic biomarkers including higher levels of branched-chain amino acids and the inflammation biomarker glycoprotein acetyls. Associations for general and abdominal adiposity are fairly independent of each other but, given general and abdominal adiposity, higher gluteo-femoral adiposity is associated with a strongly favourable cardiometabolic lipid profile.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results provide insight to the lipidic and metabolomic signatures of different adiposity markers in a previously understudied population where adiposity is common but lipid-lowering therapy is not.