According to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, type 2 diabetics with higher fat mass index are prone to develop cardiovascular events. The study showed that fat mass index (FMI) is superior to lean body mass index (BMI) in predicting heart-related events.
Researchers conducted a post hoc analysis of data from the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) study. This study involved 10251 patients and had a mean follow up of 8.8 years. Of these, a major cardiovascular event occurred in 1801 patients (17.8%). In the study patients in the fourth quartile for fat mass index had a hazard ratio of 1.53 compared to patients in the first quartile.
This study is important as it provides better metric fat mass index (FMI) to predict cardiovascular events compared to BMI which is commonly used to measure obesity.