Body composition of Slovak midlife women with cardiovascular complications

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse differences in body composition of women with and without cardiovascular complications. Bioelectrical parameters were measured with bioimpedance monofrequency analyser (BIA 101) and tissue electric properties were analysed by bioelectric impedance vector analysis (BIVA). The clinical sample (with CVD) consisted of 254 women ranging in age between 39 and 65 years. The sample of women without CVD consisted of 318 women in the same age range and was created from database of our previous studies. Statistical analysis adjusted for age showed significant differences in body composition characteristics of the studied samples. The results of vector analysis showed significantly different tissue electric properties of women in studied groups, what was confirmed by the Hotelling T2- test (p=0.0000). More women with CVD attained risky mean values of obesity indices of BMI and WHR than their “healthy” counterparts. Among women with CVD 80.2% had higher value of the BMI index than optimal one (>24.9 kg/m2) and 74.4% of women had higher value of the WHR index than optimal (>0.80). From the BIA parameters strong correlation coefficient was found between BMI and FM in both groups (r=0.962 for women with CVD; r=0.968 for relatively healthy women). Our data confirmed that cardiovascular disease complications are strongly linked in body composition changes. The cross-sectional nature of our study makes it difficult to draw conclusions regarding causal pathways, though variables of obesity are in line with unhealthy conditions.

Keywords

• bioelectrical impedance analysis
• body fat mass
• obesity indices
• biva