Ultrasonographic intra-abdominal depth and its relation to haemostatic factors in healthy males

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship of intra-abdominal fat to plasma haemostatic factors. SUBJECTS: 60 healthy, predominantly nonobese, male volunteers aged 38 years. MEASUREMENTS: Anthropometry, sonographic intra-abdominal depth (IAD), as an indicator of intra-abdominal fat, plasma lipids, plasma insulin (at fasting and after glucose load), various plasma haemostatic factors. RESULTS: Sonographic IAD correlated positively with plasma fibrinogen (r=0.33; P lt 0.01), PAI-1 activity (r=0.52; P lt 0.0001) and antigen (r = 0.32; P lt 0.05), and negatively with t-PA activity, at baseline and after stasis (r= - 0.28 and r= 0.31; P lt 0.05). Factor VII levels did not correlate significantly with sonographic IAD. Haemostatic variables were also closely associated with BMI, plasma triglyceride and insulin concentrations. Most correlations of haemostatic factors with IAD disappeared after adjustment for either BMI or insulin or triglycerides, except PAI-1 levels which maintained a significant association even after simultaneous adjustment for all potential confounders. CONCLUSIONS: These results, obtained by sonography, confirm our previous findings of significant associations of haemostatic variables with visceral fat accumulation by using computed tomography, and highlight the role of the intra-abdominal fat as an independent predictor of PAI-1 activity.