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Clinical Nutrition

Longitudinal association of measures of adiposity with serum antioxidant concentrations in postmenopausal women

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 70, pages 47–53 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

The relationship between obesity and circulating levels of antioxidants is poorly understood. Most studies that have examined the association of adiposity with blood or tissue concentrations of antioxidant micronutrients have been cross-sectional, and few have compared the associations for indices of overall obesity and central obesity. Our aim was to prospectively examine the longitudinal association of body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist circumference-height ratio (WCHtR) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) with major serum antioxidants in a population of postmenopausal women.

Subjects/Methods:

We used a subsample of participants in the Women’s Health Initiative aged 50–79 years at entry with available fasting blood samples and anthropometric measurements obtained at multiple time points over 12.8 years of follow-up (N=2672). Blood samples were used to measure α-carotene, β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, lutein+zeaxanthin, α-tocopherol, γ-tocopherol and retinol at baseline, and at years 1, 3 and 6. We used mixed-effects linear regression analyses to examine associations between anthropometric measures and serum antioxidants at baseline and over time, controlling for covariates.

Results:

In longitudinal analyses, carotenoids, and particularly β-carotene, were strongly and inversely associated with BMI, WC and WCHtR and less so with WHR. α-Tocopherol showed a strong positive association with WHR but not with other anthropometric measures, whereas γ-tocopherol was positively and strongly associated with BMI, WC, WCHtR and less so with WHR. Retinol was positively associated with WHR. The inverse association of several carotenoids with anthropometric measures was stronger in never and former smokers compared with current smokers and in women without the metabolic syndrome. The inverse association of carotenoids with obesity measures may reflect reduced micronutrient concentrations owing to inflammation associated with obesity.

Conclusions:

In the present study, the strongest observed associations between anthropometric variables and micronutrients were an inverse association of WC with serum β-carotene and a positive association of WC with γ-tocopherol.

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Acknowledgements

Short list of WHI investigators: Program Office: (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Bethesda, Maryland) Jacques Rossouw, Shari Ludlam, Dale Burwen, Joan McGowan, Leslie Ford, and Nancy Geller. Clinical Coordinating Center: Clinical Coordinating Center: (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA) Garnet Anderson, Ross Prentice, Andrea LaCroix and Charles Kooperberg. Investigators and Academic Centers: (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA) JoAnn E. Manson; (MedStar Health Research Institute/Howard University, Washington, D.C., USA) Barbara V. Howard; (Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford, CA, USA) Marcia L Stefanick; (The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA) Rebecca Jackson; (University of Arizona, Tucson/Phoenix, AZ, USA) Cynthia A Thomson; (University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA) Jean Wactawski-Wende; (University of Florida, Gainesville/Jacksonville, FL, USA) Marian Limacher; (University of Iowa, Iowa City/Davenport, IA, USA) Robert Wallace; (University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) Lewis Kuller; (Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA) Sally Shumaker. Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study: (Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA) Sally Shumaker. For a list of all the investigators who have contributed to WHI science, please visit: http://www.whiscience.org/publications/WHI_investigators_longlist.pdf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY, USA

    G C Kabat, M Heo, Y Mossavar-Rahmani & T E Rohan

  2. Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Health Profession, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    H M Ochs-Balcom

  3. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    M S LeBoff

  4. Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA

    L L Adams-Campbell

  5. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    R Nassir

  6. Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    J Ard

  7. Department of Nursing, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    O Zaslavsky

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  1. G C Kabat
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Correspondence to G C Kabat.

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Kabat, G., Heo, M., Ochs-Balcom, H. et al. Longitudinal association of measures of adiposity with serum antioxidant concentrations in postmenopausal women. Eur J Clin Nutr 70, 47–53 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2015.74

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