The combined effect of adiposity, fat distribution and age on cardiovascular risk factors and motor disability in a cohort of obese women (aged 18-83)

Obesity is associated with a number of serious diseases and with a degree of motor disability, but the extent of the risk and functional derangement within the obese population is not yet completely defined. The study aims to evaluate the combined effect of degree of adiposity, body fat distribution and age on selected cardiovascular risk factors and functional motor disability in a cohort of obese women. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is employed to show the combined impact of body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and age on systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), total and HDL cholesterol (T-CH and HDL-CH), coronary heart disease (CHD) risk, leg power output (Ẇ, assessed with a Margaria test for stair climbing) and subjective general fatigue in a cohort of 463 obese women (BMI range 30.2-66.7 kg/m² age range 18-83 yr). High WHR and older age, but not BMI, are to a variable degree related to unfavorable values of parameters which contribute to the cardiovascular risk. WHR in the high range is associated with significantly higher values of SBP (p2) but not in those with a low one (BMI 2). In contrast, WHR did not significantly affectẆ, which appeared to be mainly dependent on age (p