Relationship between Metabolically Unhealthy Obesity and Visceral Adipose Tissue in Youth

Background: Obesity in children and adolescents has been associated with several cardiometabolic conditions, in particular in relation with visceral adipose tissue (VAT) accumulation. Nevertheless, metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) was defined as a sub-phenotype of obesity in youth having high body mass index (BMI) values but metabolically healthy profiles, unlike metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO) characterized by high BMI values and cardiometabolic issues. The objective of the study is to investigate the relationship between MUO and VAT in European youth. Methods: BMI, Tanner stages, VAT by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting glucose, triglycerides and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were assessed in 168 youth, 7-17 years old, from the Diabetes and Endocrinology Care Pediatric Clinic, Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg. The MUO definition was based on the presence of at least 2 cardiometabolic risk factors among the aforementioned. Logistic regressions were used to assess the relationship between MUO and VAT. Results: Taking age, gender and Tanner stages as a fixed value, for every one unit increase in VAT, the odds of having MUO increased by 1.32 units (95% CI [1.087 ; 1.607], p-value = 0.0052). Conclusions: VAT accumulation increases the likelihood of developing MUO phenotypes among European youth.