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. 2024 Aug 21;24(1):2269.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-19722-0.

Association of the visceral fat metabolic score with osteoarthritis risk: a cross-sectional study from NHANES 2009-2018

Hongfei Xue #  1   2 , Longyao Zhang #  1   2 , Jiankang Xu  1   2 , Kuiliang Gao  1   2 , Chao Zhang  1   2 , Lingling Jiang  3 , Sirui Lv  1   2 , Chao Zhang  4   5
Affiliations

Association of the visceral fat metabolic score with osteoarthritis risk: a cross-sectional study from NHANES 2009-2018

Hongfei Xue et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Currently, obesity has been recognized to be an independent risk factor for osteoarthritis (OA), and the Metabolic Score for Visceral Fat (METS-VF) has been suggested to be potentially more accurate than body mass index (BMI) in the assessment of obesity. Nevertheless, the correlation of METS-VF with OA has not been obviously revealed yet. Therefore, this study aimed to delve into the potential relationship between METS-VF and OA.

Methods: By examining data from the NHANES (2009-2018), weighted multivariate logistic regression analyses were used for assessing the correlation between METS-VF and OA. Subgroup analyses were then performed to validate the findings. Moreover, the nonlinear relationship between the two was assessed by restricted cubic spline (RCS). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted to examine the diagnostic accuracy of METS-VF versus previous obesity index for OA.

Results: This study involved 7639 participants. According to our results, METS-VF was notably related to an elevated risk of OA, regardless of the METS-VF and the trend of positive association was more pronounced with the elevating METS-VF level (p for trend < 0.05). Subgroup analyses showed that the positive association between METS-VF and prevalence of osteoarthritis persisted in all populations with different characteristics, confirming its validity in all populations. Besides, RCS results showed a significant non-linear relationship between METS-VF and OA (p-non-linear < 0.05). As indicated by the ROC curve analysis results, METS-VF was a superior predictor of OA to BMI and HC.

Conclusions: This study finds a possible nonlinear positive correlation between METS-VF and the risk of OA. In addition, METS-VF may serve as an indicator for the more accurate diagnosis of OA and provide a new way to further evaluate the relationship between visceral fat and OA.

Keywords: Cross-sectional studies; METS-VF; NHANES; Osteoarthritis; Visceral fat metabolism.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow chart for participants
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Subgroup analysis of the association between METS-VF and osteoarthritis. All the covariates in Table 1 were adjusted
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The RCS plot between METS-VF and osteoarthritis. All the covariates in Table 1 were adjusted. The area enclosed by the solid red line and the transparent purple line represents the estimated ORs and its 95%confidence intervals. (OR, odds ratio)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
ROC curve for OA prevalence. Predicting OA using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)curve. Comparison of area under curve (AUC) value between METS-VF and HC, BMI. The red curve represents the METS-VF, the blue curve represents HC, Green curve represents BMI
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