Relationship between body mass index and outcomes of coronary artery disease in Asian population: Insight from the FOCUS registry.

Background: Obesity is often considered as a risk factor of cardiovascular events, but recent researches showed conflicting results regarding to the effect of body weight on prognosis of coronary artery disease (CAD). This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and clinical outcomes of CAD in Asian population.

Methods: A total of 4315 patients from the FOCUS registry were enrolled into this analysis. Patients were divided into 4 groups according to BMI: lean group (BMI<18.5 kg/m), normal group (BMI 18.5-24.9 kg/m), overweight group (BMI 25-30 kg/m) and obesity group (BMI>30 kg/m). Follow-up was continued to 3 years to evaluate clinical outcomes, and the primary endpoint was a composite of all-cause death and myocardial infarction (MI).

Results: Patients with higher BMI were more likely to be associated with cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and diabetes, but not smoking. At the end of the follow-up period, however, the incidence of a composite endpoint of all-cause death and MI was significantly lower in the higher BMI (overweight and obese) subsets, as compared with the lower BMI group (5.2% vs. 8.0%, p < 0.001). So did the cumulative rates of all-cause death (p < 0.001), cardiovascular death (p < 0.001), and a combined endpoint of cardiovascular death and MI (p = 0.001).

Conclusions: In Asian patients with CAD, an inverse association between BMI and long-term prognosis was observed. Although overweight or obese patients were associated with more metabolism-associated comorbidities, they had significantly lower adverse events at 3-year follow up after percutaneous coronary intervention.