MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Samar El Khoudary, PhD, MPH, BPharm, FAHA Associate Professor of Epidemiology University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Research increasingly shows that it isn’t so important how much fat a woman is carrying, which doctors typically measure using weight and BMI, as it is where she is carrying that fat. To investigate this, we looked at 25 years of data on 362 women from Pittsburgh and Chicago who participated in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Heart study. The women, who were an average age of 51, had their visceral adipose tissue—fat surrounding the abdominal organs—measured by CT scan and the thickness of the internal carotid artery lining in their neck measured by ultrasound, at a few points during the study. Carotid artery thickness is an early indicator of heart disease. (more…)