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(Hypertension. 2005;45:175.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial Commentaries

Stiffening Our Resolve Against Adult Weight Gain

From the Department of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Correspondence to Douglas R. Seals, PhD, Department of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado at Boulder, UCB 354, Boulder, CO 80309. E-mail seals@colorado.edu

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Increasing adiposity with a clinical endpoint of obesity is associated with a progressive increase in risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). However, we are only beginning to understand the physiological and pathophysiological mechanisms by which excessive body fat storage causes CVD.

In this issue of Hypertension, the findings of Wildman et al¹ extend and strengthen previous observations^2–5 by showing that changes in arterial stiffness, as measured by aortic pulse-wave velocity (PWV), are related to changes in body weight over a 2-year follow-up period in healthy men and women aged 20 to 40 years. Weight gain was associated with an increase, whereas weight loss was associated with a decrease in aortic PWV, independent of changes in blood pressure. The greatest increases in aortic PWV were observed in those subjects who gained the most weight (4.5 kg). Importantly, the changes in aortic PWV were related to changes in body mass index (BMI), indicating that the associations with body weight were mediated by changes in adiposity (rather than fat-free mass). Changes in aortic PWV over time also were related to baseline body weight, BMI, and waist circumference (an indirect measure of abdominal adiposity), providing evidence that higher initial levels of total and abdominal body fatness are associated with greater future increases in arterial stiffness. The study included subjects with a broad range of BMI, suggesting that the findings are applicable to both nonobese and obese adults in the general population. An important finding was that black adults demonstrated greater increases in weight . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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