Is local or central adiposity more strongly associated with incident knee osteoarthritis than the body mass index in men or women?

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether central (abdominal) or peripheral (thigh) adiposity measures are associated with incident radiographic knee osteoarthritis (RKOA) independent of body mass index (BMI) and whether their relation to RKOA was stronger than that of BMI.

DESIGN: 161 Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) participants (62% female) with incident RKOA (Kellgren/Lawrence grade 0/1 at baseline, developing an osteophyte and joint space narrowing (JSN) grade ≥1 by year-4) were matched to 186 controls (58% female) without incident RKOA. Baseline waist-height-ratio (WHtR), and anatomical cross-sectional areas of thigh subcutaneous (SCF) and intermuscular fat (IMF) were measured, the latter using axial magnetic resonance images. Logistic regression assessed the relationship between each adiposity measure and incident RKOA before and after adjustment for BMI, and area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) for each adiposity measure was compared to that of BMI using chi-squared tests.

RESULTS: BMI, WHtR, subcutaneous fat (SCF) and IMF were all significantly associated with incident RKOA when analysed separately, with similar effect sizes (odds ratio range 1.30-1.53). After adjusting for BMI, odds ratios (ORs) for WHtR, SCF and IMF were attenuated and no longer statistically significant. No measure of central or peripheral adiposity was significantly more strongly associated with incident RKOA than BMI. Results were similar for men and women.

CONCLUSIONS: Although both central (WHtR) and peripheral (SCF and IMF) adiposity were significantly associated with incident RKOA, neither was more strongly associated with incident RKOA than BMI. The simple measure of BMI appears sufficient to capture the elevated risk of RKOA associated with greater amounts of localised adiposity.