Ethnic Differences in Body Fat Deposition and Liver Fat Content in Two UK‐Based Cohorts

Abstract

Objective Differences in the content and distribution of body fat and ectopic lipids may be responsible for ethnic variations in metabolic disease susceptibility. The aim of this study was to examine the ethnic distribution of body fat in two separate UK‐based populations. Methods Anthropometry and body composition were assessed in two separate UK cohorts: the Hammersmith cohort and the UK Biobank, both comprising individuals of South Asian descent (SA), individuals of Afro‐Caribbean descent (AC), and individuals of European descent (EUR). Regional adipose tissue stores and liver fat were measured by magnetic resonance techniques. Results The Hammersmith cohort (n = 747) had a mean (SD) age of 41.1 (14.5) years (EUR: 374 men, 240 women; SA: 68 men, 22 women; AC: 14 men, 29 women), and the UK Biobank (n = 9,533) had a mean (SD) age of 55.5 (7.5) years (EUR: 4,483 men, 4,873 women; SA: 80 men, 43 women, AC: 31 men, 25 women). Following adjustment for age and BMI, no significant differences in visceral adipose tissue or liver fat were observed between SA and EUR individuals in the either cohort. Conclusions Our data, consistent across two independent UK‐based cohorts, present a limited number of ethnic differences in the distribution of body fat depots associated with metabolic disease. These results suggest that the ethnic variation in susceptibility to features of the metabolic syndrome may not arise from differences in body fat.

Predictive capacity and cut-off points of adiposity indices for body fat prediction according to adolescent periods

“…The range of the sample can be considered a limitation of the study, since adolescents from only one city were assessed. Also, studies have shown that there may be distinctions in body composition between different ethnicities (52,53) , although there is still no consensus on the subject (54) . However, the study has a significant sample number and comprised the whole age group of adolescents of different races and socio-economic status.…”

Ectopic fat deposition in populations of black African ancestry: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Where a single publication had more than one ethnic comparator, the n was divided by the number of ethnic comparators and rounded down to the nearest whole number [22]. The publication by Alenaini et al [23] included data from two distinct cohorts, which were included in the meta-analysis separately.…”

“…Twenty studies assessed IHL; using: MRS (n = 8) [23,24,[26][27][28][29][30][31], CT (n = 7) [25,[32][33][34][35][36][37], MRI (n = 4) [38][39][40][41] and both MRS and CT (n = 1) [42]. In the majority of these studies, the comparator ethnicities were WE (n = 18) [23-35, 37-40, 42] and HIS (n = 7) [25,28,31,34,36,40,41], with smaller numbers of SA (n = 3) [23,25,33], EA (n = 3) [25,34,40], South-east Asian (n = 1) [34] and Native Hawaiian (n = 1) [40].…”

“…Data from 11 studies that used MRI or MRS [23,24,[27][28][29][30][31][38][39][40][41] were included in a meta-analysis (2 studies could not be included due to the method of IHL calculation or presentation [26,42]). The pooled effect of BA ethnicity on IHL is presented in Fig.…”

“…This suggests that IHL seems to be significantly lower in BA compared to comparator ethnicities regardless of these factors, but due to this unexplained heterogeneity, the magnitude of the difference in IHL between BA and comparator ethnicities is uncertain. In sensitivity analyses, removing studies where means and SD were estimated [24,28,29,38] and those only reporting means adjusted for covariates [23,40] changed the magnitude but not the direction of the difference in IHL between BA and comparator ethnicities: see online Supplementary Fig. 7-8.…”