Ultrasonography for the Evaluation of Visceral Fat and Cardiovascular Risk

Abstract

Abstract-Visceral fat accumulation is associated with increased cardiovascular risk. Clinical evaluation of visceral fat is limited because of the lack of reliable and low-cost methods. To assess the correlation between ultrasonography and computed tomography (CT) for the evaluation of visceral fat, 101 obese women, age 50.5Ϯ7.7 years with a body mass index of 39.2Ϯ5.4 kg/m 2 , were submitted to ultrasonograph and CT scans. Visceral fat measured by ultrasonography, 1 cm above the umbilical knot, showed a high correlation with CT-determined visceral fat (rϭ0.67, PϽ0.0001). The ultrasonograph method showed good reproducibility with an intra-observer variation coefficient of Ͻ2%. Both ultrasonograph and CT visceral fat values were correlated with fasting insulin (rϭ0.29 and rϭ0.27, PϽ0.01) and plasma glucose 2 hours after oral glucose load (rϭ0.22 and rϭ0.34, PϽ0.05), indicating that ultrasonography is a useful method to evaluate cardiovascular risk. A significant correlation was also found between visceral fat by CT and serum sodium (rϭ0.18, PϽ0.05). A ultrasonograph-determined visceral-to-subcutaneous fat ratio of 2.50 was established as a cutoff value to define patients with abdominal visceral obesity. This value also identified patients with higher levels of plasma glucose, serum insulin and triglycerides and lower levels of HDL-cholesterol, which are metabolic abnormalities characteristic of the metabolic syndrome. Our data demonstrate that ultrasonography is a precise and reliable method for evaluation of visceral fat and identification of patients with adverse metabolic profile.

Fat redistribution preferentially reflects the anti-inflammatory benefits of pioglitazone treatment

“…Although several studies have used CT or magnetic resonance imaging as a standard method, ultrasonography has been reported to be a more reliable and convenient method to measure the amount of visceral fat [53]. Indeed, Kim et al [35] reported that SFT and VFT, the same parameters used in the present study, are well correlated with subcutaneous and visceral fat areas as measured by CT (r = 0.806 and 0.799, P = .001, respectively).…”

Visceral fat amount is associated with carotid atherosclerosis even in type 2 diabetic men with a normal waist circumference

“…Ultrasonography is a widely available instrument to most clinical settings and could avoid the weaknesses of CT. Several studies report that the diverse indices using ultrasonography are a reliable way of quantifying the visceral fat depot. 7,[22][23][24][25][26] We had previously reported that ultrasonographic VFT was strongly correlated with visceral adipose tissue area by CT and could be a reliable risk factor associated with CVD and metabolic syndrome. 10 Therefore, measuring directly visceral fat accumulation by ultrasonography may be simple but important for identifying truly high risk individuals to CVD.…”

Relationship between Visceral Fat and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: The Tanno and Sobetsu Study

“…However, abdominal CT is not a simple technique, and WC also has the drawback of leading to an assessment that includes subcutaneous fat. In contrast, US involves no radiation exposure, the technique can be quickly learned, it is typically completed in less than 5 min, and it has been reported to have a good level of reproducibility (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). In the present study we therefore investigated whether US can be used as an easy screening method for the accurate estimation of the accumulation of visceral fat in Japanese as well.…”

“…Simple methods for assessing visceral fat accumulation using ultrasonography (US) have been studied in recent years (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). In addition, previous studies have indicated a relationship between hypertension and visceral fat assessed by abdominal CT and WC, but US was not used in any of those studies (21)(22)(23)(24).…”