Early adulthood obesity is associated with impaired left ventricular and right ventricular functions evaluated by speckle tracking and 3D echocardiography

OBJECTIVE
The prevalence of obesity is increasing globally. Obesity has been shown to be associated with adverse cardiac outcomes. Current knowledge on the impairment of cardiac function caused by obesity in young adult population is lacking. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the effect of obesity on cardiac deformation parameters in healthy obese individuals in early adulthood using 2D deformation imaging and 3D echocardiography.

METHODS
Seventy-seven volunteers with a body mass index (BMI) above 25 kg/m2 who were between 18 and 30 years of age and a control group including 40 participants were included. Patients with a history of organic heart disease, poor image quality, or current pregnancy were excluded. Participants were classified as overweight (BMI of 25-29.9 kg/m2) and obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2). Two dimensional and 3D appropriate echocardiographic images were recorded and further analyzed with a post-processing software to obtain the global longitudinal strain (GLS) of left (LV) and right ventricle (RV).

RESULTS
A total of 117 subjects without metabolic syndrome were enrolled. Conventional dimensional and functional parameters as well as 3D volumetric measurements showed no significant differences among the groups. Presence of epicardial fat tissue was higher in the obese group. Notable differences were found among the groups for both 2D speckle tracking derived and 3D LV GLS, RV GLS, RV free-wall LS (analysis of variance [ANOVA], p<0.05) showing lower deformation in obese subjects. LV torsion was found to be significantly higher (ANOVA, p<0.05) for the obese group.

CONCLUSION
Obesity causes subclinical dysfunction of LV and RV in healthy obese subjects in early adulthood. Risk stratification should be performed by considering possible mentioned impact of obesity on myocardial functions.