Abdominal adipose tissue compartments vary with ethnicity in Asian neonates: Growing Up in Singapore Toward Healthy Outcomes birth cohort study

Abdominal adipose tissue compartments vary with ethnicity in Asian neonates: Growing Up in Singapore Toward Healthy Outcomes birth cohort study

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

10.3945/ajcn.115.108738

https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.115.108738

Mya Thway Tint, Marielle V. Fortier, Keith M. Godfrey, Borys Shuter, Jeevesh Kapur, Victor S. Rajadurai, Pratibha Agarwal, Amutha Chinnadurai, Krishnamoorthy Niduvaje, Yiong-Huak Chan, Izzuddin M. Aris, Shu-E Soh, Fabian Yap, Seang Mei Saw, Michael S. Kramer, Peter D. Gluckman, Yap Seng Chong, Yung Seng Lee

Abdominal adipose tissue compartments

06 April 2016

Mya Thway Tint, Marielle V Fortier, Keith M Godfrey, Borys Shuter, Jeevesh Kapur, Victor S Rajadurai, Pratibha Agarwal, Amutha Chinnadurai, Krishnamoorthy Niduvaje, Yiong-Huak Chan, Izzuddin Bin Mohd Aris, Shu-E Soh, Fabian Yap, Seang-Mei Saw, Michael S Kramer, Peter D Gluckman, Yap-Seng Chong, Yung-Seng Lee, Abdominal adipose tissue compartments vary with ethnicity in Asian neonates: Growing Up in Singapore Toward Healthy Outcomes birth cohort study, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 103, Issue 5, May 2016, Pages 1311–1317, https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.115.108738

Background: A susceptibility to metabolic diseases is associated with abdominal adipose tissue distribution and varies between ethnic groups. The distribution of abdominal adipose tissue at birth may give insights into whether ethnicity-associated variations in metabolic risk originate partly in utero. Objective: We assessed the influence of ethnicity on abdominal adipose tissue compartments in Asian neonates in the Growing Up in Singapore Toward Healthy Outcomes mother-offspring cohort. Design: MRI was performed at ≤2 wk after birth in 333 neonates born at ≥34 wk of gestation and with birth weights ≥2000 g. Abdominal superficial subcutaneous tissue (sSAT), deep subcutaneous tissue (dSAT), and internal adipose tissue (IAT) compartment volumes (absolute and as a percentage of the total abdominal volume) were quantified. Results: In multivariate analyses that were controlled for sex, age, and parity, the absolute and percentage of dSAT and the percentage of sSAT (but not absolute sSAT) were greater, whereas absolute IAT (but not the percentage of IAT) was lower, in Indian neonates than in Chinese neonates. Compared with Chinese neonates, Malay neonates had greater percentages of sSAT and dSAT but similar percentages of IAT. Marginal structural model analyses largely confirmed the results on the basis of volume percentages with controlled direct effects of ethnicity on abdominal adipose tissue; dSAT was significantly greater (1.45 mL; 95% CI: 0.49, 2.41 mL, P = 0.003) in non-Chinese (Indian or Malay) neonates than in Chinese neonates. However, ethnic differences in sSAT and IAT were NS [3.06 mL (95% CI:-0.27, 6.39 mL; P = 0.0712) for sSAT and -1.30 mL (95% CI: -2.64, 0.04 mL; P = 0.057) for IAT in non-Chinese compared with Chinese neonates, respectively]. Conclusions: Indian and Malay neonates have a greater dSAT volume than do Chinese neonates. This finding supports the notion that in utero influences may contribute to higher cardiometabolic risk observed in Indian and Malay persons in our population. If such differences persist in the longitudinal tracking of adipose tissue growth, these differences may contribute to the ethnic disparities in risks of cardiometabolic diseases. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01174875.

PublisherCopyrights

Supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation under its Translational and Clinical Research Flagship Programme and administered by the Singapore Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Council (Singapore-NMRC/TCR/004-NUS/2008). KMG is supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) through the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), project EarlyNutrition (grant 289346). This is a free access article, distributed under terms (http://www.nutrition.org/publications/guidelines-and-policies/license/) that permit unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

https://oar.a-star.edu.sg/communities-collections/articles/15922

0002-9165
1938-3207

Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences