Heavy daily drinking tied to increased ectopic fat
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Key takeaways:
- Heavy daily drinking conferred elevated ectopic adiposity vs. lifetime abstention.
- Researchers observed a J-shaped association between daily alcohol intake and ectopic adiposity.
Increased daily alcohol intake was associated with elevated ectopic adiposity, especially among individuals who reported binge drinking in the past month, researchers reported.
This cross-sectional analysis of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
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“The potential mechanisms by which excessive alcohol may raise CVD risk include its association with higher BMI, BP, blood glucose and atherogenic dyslipidemia,” Richard Kazibwe, MD, MS, clinical assistant professor in hospital medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote. “Another possible mechanism may involve the effect of alcohol on ectopic fat deposition, which is defined as the accumulation of adipocytes in and around organs such as the liver, skeletal muscle, intestines and heart. Furthermore, ectopic fat deposition is associated with CVD independent of other risk factors, including obesity using BMI criteria.”
The present study included 6,756 MESA participants (mean age, 62 years; 47% women), of whom 6,734 had chest CT to assess pericardial and hepatic fat and 1,934 had abdominal CT to measure subcutaneous, intermuscular and visceral fat.
Overall, 20.6% pf participants reported lifetime abstention from alcohol; 24% reported former drinking; 43.3% reported light drinking defined as less than one drink per day; 8.8% reported moderate drinking defined as one to two drinks per day; and 3.3% reported heavy drinking defined as more than two drinks per day.
The researchers reported that heavy drinking was associated with 15.1% more pericardial fat (95% CI, 7.1-27.7), 3.4% more hepatic fat (95% CI, 0.1-6.8), 2.5% more visceral fat (95% CI, 10.4 to 17.2) and 5.2% more intermuscular fat (95% CI, 6.6 to 18.4), but 3.5% lower subcutaneous fat (95% CI, 15.5 to 10.2), compared with lifetime abstention.
In all fat depots, Kazibwe and colleagues observed a J-shaped pattern of percent difference in the association with alcohol intake, with the least ectopic found among participants who reported light and moderate drinking patterns compared with heavy drinking.
Moreover, compared with participants reporting light and moderate drinking, those reporting binge drinking patterns — defined as five or more drinks in 1 day in the prior month — had higher adiposity across all fat depots.
“Alcohol consumption had a J- shaped association with ectopic adiposity consistent across different fat depots, with both heavy alcohol intake and binge alcohol drinking associated with higher fat levels,” the researchers wrote. “Future studies are needed to investigate the role that ectopic fat distribution plays in mediating the relationship between alcohol consumption and CVD.”
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