In the face of a growing obesity epidemic in the United States,
researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have
new study results that indicate that how much fat a person has is
not as important as where that fat is located when assessing risk
for cardiovascular events and metabolic disease. "We are facing an
obesity epidemic, which obviously affects many things - metabolic
abnormalities, cardiovascular disease, etc.," said Jingzhong Ding,
M.D., lead researcher and an assistant professor of gerontology.
"Now we are finding out that where the fat is distributed is of
high importance." The findings of the study, funded by the National
Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institutes of
Health, will appear in the September issue of the American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition, a publication of the American Society for
Nutrition. For the study, researchers used cardiac and CT scans to
measure multiple fat depots in 398 white and black participan