The Cardiovascular Impact and Genetics of Pericardial Adiposity.

What is new? In a large, prospective and uniformly phenotyped cohort, pericardial adipose tissue was independently predictive of incident heart failure and type 2 diabetes when adjusted for body mass index.In contrast, pericardial adipose tissue was not independently predictive of atrial fibrillation.A genome-wide association study of pericardial adipose tissue identified five novel loci, implicating genes influencing adipocyte morphology, brown-like adipose tissue differentiation and abdominal adiposity. What are the clinical implications? Pericardial adipose tissue accumulation may reflect a metabolically unhealthy adiposity phenotype similarly to abdominal visceral adiposity.