Waist-to-height ratio may predict heart failure incidence, suggests research

The study population consisted of 1,792 participants from the Malmö Preventive Project. Participants were aged 45–73 years at baseline and were selected so that approximately one-third had normal blood glucose levels, one-third had impaired fasting glucose and one-third had diabetes. All participants were followed prospectively for incident HF.

The study population had a mean age of 67 years and 29% were women. The median WtHR was 0.57 (interquartile range, 0.52–0.61).

During the median follow-up of 12.6 years, 132 HF events occurred. Higher WtHR was associated with a significantly increased risk of incident HF (hazard ratio [HR] per one standard deviation increase 1.34; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.12–1.61; p=0.001), independent of confounders. When WtHR was categorised into quartiles, individuals with the highest values of WtHR (median of 0.65) had a significantly higher risk of HF compared with individuals in the other three quartiles (HR 2.71; 95% CI 1.64–4.48; p<0.001).

Study co-author, Dr. John Molvin from Lund University and Malmö University Hospital, Sweden, noted: “The median WtHR in our analysis was considerably higher than 0.5, the cut-off for increased cardiometabolic risk. Having a waist measurement that is less than half your height is ideal.” He concluded: “We found that WtHR was a significant predictor of incident HF and our results suggest that WtHR may be a better metric than BMI to identify patients with HF who could benefit from therapies for obesity. Our next step is to investigate whether WtHR predicts incident HF and also other cardiometabolic disorders in a larger cohort.”