The Relationship between Measures of Obesity and Incident Heart Failure: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the strength of association of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) with incident heart failure (HF), exploring our associations by ethnicity and age. DESIGN AND METHODS: We included 6,809 participants, aged 45–84 years, without clinical cardiovascular disease (2000–2002), from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Cox-Proportional hazards models were used to examine associations of BMI and WC with incident HF. The predictive abilities of BMI and WC were compared using receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS: Over a median follow-up of 7.6 years, there were 176 cases. BMI and WC were associated with incident HF in men [1.33 (1.10–1.61) and 1.38 (1.18–1.62) respectively] and women [1.70 (1.33–2.17) and 1.64 (1.29–2.08) respectively]. These associations became non-significant after adjusting for obesity-related conditions (hypertension, dysglycemia, hypercholesterolemia, left ventricular hypertrophy, kidney disease and inflammation). The associations of BMI and WC did not vary significantly by ethnicity or age-group, but were inverse in Hispanic men. The area under the curve for BMI and WC was 0.749 and 0.750, respectively, in men and 0.782 and 0.777, respectively, in women. CONCLUSIONS: The association between obesity and incident HF is largely mediated by obesity-related conditions. BMI and WC have similar predictive abilities for incident HF.