Obesity ‘associated with silent heart damage’

Obese people without overt heart disease experience silent cardiac damage as a result of their excess weight, a new study has revealed.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins have used an ultra-sensitive blood test to detect the presence of a protein that indicates the presence of heart muscle injury. They found that obesity leads to subclinical heart muscle injury and increases heart failure risk, even among symptom-free patients.

This challenges the commonly held belief that the increased risk of cardiovascular disease seen in severely overweight people is driven by diabetes and high blood pressure, instead suggesting that obesity is an independent driver of heart muscle damage.

Following this, the team aim to study the precise mechanism by which obesity causes heart damage to find whether a reduction in weight would lower the risk for heart failure.

Dr Roger Blumenthal, director of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, said: "Obese people, even when free of cardiovascular symptoms, should be monitored for the earliest signs of heart failure and counseled on ways to improve their lifestyle habits."

Obesity is estimated to affect around one in every four adults in the UK, as well as around one in every five children aged ten to 11.