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Abstract #1146

Interethnic Differences in Fat Metabolism of Overweight Chinese, Malays & Indians by MRI & MRS Approaches

Suresh Anand Sadananthan1,2, Melvin Khee-Shing Leow1,3, Chin Meng Khoo4, Yung Seng Lee1,4, E. Shyong Tai1,4, Sambasivam Sendhil Velan1,5

1Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, A*STAR, Singapore; 2Dept. of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, National University of Singapore, Singapore; 3Dept. of Endocrinology, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore; 4Dept. of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore; 5Singapore BioImaging Consortium, A*STAR, Singapore


The study of fat distribution is important to understand the pathophysiology of obesity-related disorders, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. In this study, we determined the relationship between insulin sensitivity and abdominal fat (obtained by MRI), hepatic fat and intramyocellular fat (IMCL) (obtained by MRS) accumulation. We also examined whether there are ethnic differences in these fat depots in a multi-ethnic cohort of overweight adults consisting of Chinese, Malays and Indians. We observed that IMCL, abdominal and hepatic fat had significant negative correlation with ISI. IMCL and subcutaneous fat showed significant differences among the ethnic groups while hepatic fat and visceral fat had no differences.