Research

Energy balance

Visceral Adipose Tissue (VAT) and Epicardial Adipose Tissue (EAT) are stronger predictors of incident HFpEF and mortality than Body Mass Index (BMI) alone.

Don't just look at your weight. For heart failure risk, where you store fat matters more. High belly fat (VAT) and heart-adjacent fat (EAT) are major risks, even if your overall weight seems okay. Imaging can help assess this risk.

StrongQualifiesVERY_HIGH confidence
Incident HFpEF correlates more closely with visceral adipose tissue (VAT) mass than body mass index (BMI)
Aneesh Dhore-Patil et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2022

Why this rating

Supported by multiple large cohort studies (MESA, Jackson Heart Study) with hazard ratios.

Source

Diabetes Mellitus and Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction: Role of Obesity

Aneesh Dhore-Patil et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2022

DOI 10.3389/fphys.2021.785879

narrative_reviewCited 20×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →