Heart health ‘dependant on shape’

People of normal weight can still be at risk of suffering from heart problems if they have fat surrounding their organs, new research has shown.

Korean scientists investigated the link between visceral fat – which is found between the body’s organs – and the chance of developing heart disease. Their findings, published in today’s edition of Clinical Endocrinology, show that people with fat around their organs suffer from inefficient blood flow.

This is the case regardless of whether or not the person is of a normal weight, Professor Duk-Chul Lee and her colleagues at Yonsei University said.

Such a conclusion has led to calls for a test to be routinely used to measure how efficiently the heart pumps blood round the body by assessing the movement of the artery walls.

“This simple and reliable test gives us an early-warning system to detect people who might have too much fat around their organs and therefore are at risk of contracting heart disease later in life,” Prof Lee said.

Commenting on the findings, which followed the testing of 150 Korean women who led healthy lifestyles, Professor Peter Weissberg, the medical director of the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said they confirmed the view that “good heart health seems to depend more on our shape than our weight”.

“It’s possible in future that waist circumference measurement will be included to refine the heart disease risk assessment,” he said.