Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The Visceral Adiposity Index (VAI) has been proven to be an indicator of adipose distribution and function that indirectly expresses cardiometabolic risk, in particular in specific populations such as women with polycystic ovary syndrome, acromegaly or type 2 diabetes. Little information is known about its usefulness in the definition of cardiometabolic risk in ageing population.

Objective: To study VAI in relation to metabolic and hormonal data, frailty and mortality in non-institutionalized people more than 70 years old of the Mataró Ageing Study.

Methods/Design: 289 participants (142 men/147 women) were included. Individuals were characterized by anthropometric variables, metabolic syndrome (MS) parameters by IDF and ATP-III as well as hormonal factors (TSH, free-T4, growth hormone, IGF-I, ghrelin, cortisol, dehidroepiandrosterone –DHEA-, DHEAs, testosterone, SHBG, estradiol, estrone, cortisol/DHEA and cortisol/DHEAs), grip strength, Barthel and assessment of cognitive impairment (MiniCognoscitive Examination -MCE- Spanish version) and frailty by Fried criteria. VAI was calculated according to Amato et al.

Results: The whole cohort showed a statistically significant association of the individual components the MS with VAI. In women but not in men, a lineal trend association was observed between the prevalence of diabetes and VAI categorized in quartiles. However, VAI showed no association in our sample population with the presence of cardio or cerebrovascular disease. The multiple regression analysis showed that ghrelin (B=−0.240, P=0.005) and SHBG (B=−0.199, P=0.034) were the only hormonal variables independently associated to VAI in women, while no associations were found in men. After a prospective follow-up of two years, those individuals with higher VAI at basal time point were associated to frailty condition at two years (media (SD): 2.47 (2.19) in frail vs 1.71 (0.97) in non-frail, P=0.064). No significant association was found between VAI and mortality 2 and 8 years follow-up.

Conclusions: VAI does not provide additional information to MS criteria in ageing individuals in relation to cardiovascular risk or mortality in our population. However, VAI was associated to frailty in the whole cohort, and in women, with diabetes and ghrelin.