ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Obesity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1576599
Visceral Adiposity Loss is Associated with Improvement in Cardiometabolic Markers: Findings from a Dietary Intervention Study
Provisionally accepted- 1Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Research Centre, Institute for Medical Research, National Institutes of Health, Ministry of Health Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia
- 2Sector for Biostatistics and Data Repository, National Institutes of Health, Ministry of Health Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia
- 3Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Background: Visceral adiposity is closely linked with cardiometabolic disorders, but evidence on the extent of visceral fat loss required for significant improvement in cardiometabolic markers remains limited. This study aims to investigate the association between visceral fat area (VFA) reductions and improvements in cardiometabolic markers following a 3-month dietary intervention.Methods: A total of 175 adults with overweight and obesity were involved in this non-randomized controlled trial. Data on sociodemographic, anthropometric, body composition and biochemistry were collected at baseline and after 3 months of intervention. The multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the association between VFA loss (no loss, < 5% loss, and ≥ 5% loss) and improvement in cardiometabolic markers. For each cardiometabolic marker, an improvement surpassing the minimum threshold of the third tertile was classified as a good improvement.Results: Compared to those with no VFA loss, participants with VFA loss of ≥ 5% were significantly associated with a higher improvement in waist circumference (OR 2.97,), highdensity lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (OR 4.19,, triglycerides (OR 3.01, 95% CI 1.14-7.92), and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) (OR 2.95, 95% CI 1.12-7.79). Other than that, those with < 5% VFA loss were 3.6 times more likely to have a higher improvement in HDL-C compared to those with no VFA loss (OR 4.08,. Conclusion: This study found that the magnitude of VFA loss is an independent determinant of improvements in cardiometabolic markers and should be set as a clear target when designing obesity prevention programs.
Keywords: visceral fat area, visceral adiposity, Cardiometabolic markers, Lipid profiles, Insulin Resistance, intermittent fasting
Received: 10 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Abdullah, Nur Zati Iwani, Ahmad Zamri, Wan Mohd Zin, Abu Seman, Zainal Abidin, Hamzah, Azizul, Omar, Seman, Yahya and Md Noh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shazana Rifham Abdullah, Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Research Centre, Institute for Medical Research, National Institutes of Health, Ministry of Health Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia
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