Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The study, conducted by the Cambridge University-based European Prospective Investigation into Cancer cohort study (EPIC-Norfolk), found that overweight people who have a large waist but thin hips are more at risk from fat-related health problems than more ‘balanced’ individuals.

Researchers found that using the waist-hip ratio rather than waist measurement alone is a better predictor of heart disease risk among men and women, and also looked at whether the association between fat distribution and heart disease risk was independent of body mass index (BMI).

“The size of the hips seems to predict a protective effect,” said Prof Dexter Canoy, lead author of the study. “In other words, a big waist with comparably big hips does not appear to be as worrisome as a big waist with small hips.”

The research was based on 24,508 men and women ages 45 to 79 in the United Kingdom who participated in EPIC-Norfolk study who had weight, height, waist circumference, hip circumference and other heart disease risk factors measured from 1993 to 1997.

During the average nine year follow-up, 1,708 men and 892 women developed coronary heart disease and when the men and women were divided into five groups, according to waist-hip ratio, researchers found that those with the highest waist-to-hip ratio had the highest heart disease risk.

“People whose abdominal fat puts them at higher risk for heart disease do not always appear overweight or obese,” Canoy said.

“However, the overriding message from this and other studies about heart disease risk is that, despite the different measures and risk estimates, the bottom line is that many of us need to lose excess weight.

“Doctors should start looking beyond weight, height, simple waist circumference and BMI to assess heart disease. A simple waist-hip ratio measurement is a strong predictor of heart disease.”

The study’s results are definitive for predicting risk in relatively healthy men and women in the general population, Canoy said. More research is needed on whether abdominal fat distribution is an independent risk factor for heart disease among people who have chronic and other diseases at baseline.

The EPIC-Norfolk study is partly funded by the Cancer Research UK, MRC and Wellcome Trust while Canoy was funded by Cambridge Commonwealth Trust/Cambridge Overseas Trust and Christ’s College.