MiscellaneousRelation of Echocardiographic Epicardial Fat Thickness and Myocardial Fat
Section snippets
Methods
Twenty consecutive Caucasian men (mean body mass index 30.5 ± 2 kg/m2, range 25 to 36, mean age 42 ± 7 years) who were referred to our department for cardiometabolic risk assessment were recruited for transthoracic 2-dimensional guided M-mode echocardiography, hydrogen-1 (1H) magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy, cardiovascular MR imaging, and anthropometric and blood measurements. Patients with signs, symptoms, or clinical history of coronary artery disease, heart failure, diabetes mellitus,
Results
Subjects' clinical characteristics are presented in Table 1. Cardiac imaging parameters are presented in Table 2.1H-MR spectroscopic myocardial fat content, MR imaging of epicardial fat volume, and echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness were from 0.5% to 31%, 4.5 to 43 ml, and 3 to 15 mm, respectively. Intra- and interobserver reproducibilities of epicardial fat thickness were excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.90 and 0.87, respectively). Correlation between epicardial fat
Discussion
The independent and strong relation of echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness and myocardial fat in subjects with a wide range of adiposity represents the main and novel finding of this study. Our study also suggests that epicardial fat thickness, as measured by standard cardiac ultrasound, may serve a predictor of myocardial fat content better than waist circumference and other more traditional biochemical risk factors.
Myocardial fat has been previously associated with increased visceral
References (25)
- et al.
Echocardiographic epicardial fat: a review of research and clinical applications
J Am Soc Echocardiogr
(2009) - et al.
Java-based graphical user interface for the MRUI quantitation package
MAGMA
(2001) - et al.
Relation between epicardial adipose tissue and left ventricular mass
Am J Cardiol
(2004) - et al.
Impact of aging on substrate metabolism by the human heart
J Am Coll Cardiol
(2003) - et al.
Lipoapoptosis: its mechanism and its diseases
Biochim Biophys Acta
(2002) - et al.
Human epicardial adipose tissue: a review
Am Heart J
(2007) - et al.
Adiponectin expression in human epicardial adipose tissue in vivo is lower in patients with coronary artery disease
Cytokines
(2005) Relation of epicardial fat thickness to right ventricular cavity size in obese subjects
Am J Cardiol
(2009)- et al.
Relationship of epicardial adipose tissue with atrial dimensions and diastolic function in morbidly obese subjects
Int J Cardiol
(2007) - et al.
Epicardial fat from echocardiography: a new method for visceral adipose tissue prediction
Obes Res
(2003)