Related research confirms: Obesity and overweight increase the risk of myocardial damage

The rising prevalence of heart failure is partly due to the epidemic of overweight and obesity.

A study from Norway once again footnotes this: lifelong excess weight increases the risk of subclinical myocardial damage.

This is the result of researchers tracking 9,739 people who had always been of normal weight, overweight or obese for nearly 40 years.

The study found that compared with people who maintained a normal weight, people who were persistently overweight had a 27% increased risk of subclinical myocardial damage, and people who were persistently obese had a 70% increased risk.

The study determined myocardial damage by testing the blood for troponin I. When the myocardium is damaged or necrotic, troponin I is released into the blood, and an increase in troponin indicates myocardial damage.

The study showed that being overweight was associated with elevated cardiac troponin I levels, regardless of whether the person had diabetes or abdominal obesity.

The researchers note that this emphasizes the importance of weight control in preventing serious heart diseases such as heart failure.

Figure 1 Median cardiac troponin I levels (yellow) and proportion of participants with detected cardiac troponin I (green) in different weight trajectories

Obesity is associated with a variety of cardiovascular diseases, and previous articles have proposed the existence of a disease called "obesity cardiomyopathy" that develops independently of hypertension, coronary heart disease, and other heart diseases.

Obesity can have adverse effects on the heart from multiple angles, including ectopic deposition of metabolically active visceral fat that increases pumping load, hemodynamic changes, abnormal changes in nutrition, intestinal flora, and neurohumoral changes that adversely affect cardiac energy metabolism, systolic and diastolic function, and myocardial survival, as well as effects on myocardial electrophysiology that increase the risk of atrial fibrillation.

Source: China Circulation Magazine