ABSTRACT
Over the last few decades, an epidemic growth in the prevalence of obesity has been experienced with an estimation of over 1 billion cases (1). Obesity, in particular abdominal obesity, is a well-established risk predictor to the development of more life-threatening diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD), due to its close association with multiple cardiometabolic risk factors including insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, dyslipidaemia, alterations in haemostasis and fibrinolysis, and inflammation (2-7). Recent evidence from INTERHEART, the Nurses Health, the Heart Outcomes Protection Evaluation (HOPE), the Paris Prospective, and the IDEA survey studies has shown abdominal obesity to be an independent risk factor for CVD and type 2 diabetes (8-12). The current health threat posed by abdominal obesity is largely due to excess intra-abdominal adipose tissue, a highly metabolically active endocrine organ. Intra-abdominal adiposity (IAA), through the secretion of excess free fatty acids and altered adipokine release, provides an indirect link to the progression of atherosclerosis and CVD (13-15).
