Combined association of central obesity and depressive symptoms with risk of heart disease: A prospective cohort study

Objective To examine the combined association of central obesity and depressive symptoms with risk of heart disease in a national prospective cohort study of the Chinese population. Methods Data came from 10,722 community-dwelling adults aged over 45 years, from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study during 2011-2018. Central obesity was assessed with waist circumference (WC) in physical examinations (men with a WC of ≥ 90 cm and women with a WC of ≥ 80 cm). Depressive symptoms were assessed using the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (score ≥ 10). Participants were assigned to four groups according to central obesity (yes/no) and depressive symptoms (yes/no). Cox proportional hazard regression was used after adjusting for covariates. Results During 7 years of follow-up, we identified 1080 heart disease cases. Compared with people without central obesity and depressive symptoms, the multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) were 1.39 (1.18, 1.64) for those who had central obesity alone, 1.44 (1.18, 1.77) for those who had depressive symptoms alone, and 1.88 (1.55, 2.30) for those who had both central obesity and depressive symptoms. The combined association in men was more evident than that in women. Conclusions Our study provided evidence that the coexistence of central obesity and depressive symptoms were associated with a substantially increased risk of heart disease compared to those without these two conditions.