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White blood cell count is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Several lifestyle and metabolic factors such as cigarette smoking and obesity are known to be associated with an elevated white blood cell count. However, the joint effect of cigarette smoking and obesity on white blood cell count has not yet been fully described.
We explored the joint effect of cigarette smoking and obesity on white blood cell count using multiple logistic regression analyses after adjusting for confounding variables in a population-based, cross-sectional study of 416,065 Korean adults.
Cigarette smoking and body mass index have a dose-response relationship with a higher white blood cell count, but no synergistic interaction is observed between them (men, P for interaction=0.797; women, P for interaction=0.311). Cigarette smoking and body mass index might have an additive combination effect on high white blood cell count. Obese male smokers were 2.36 times more likely and obese female smokers 2.35 times more likely to have a high white blood cell count when compared with normal body mass index non-smokers.
Cigarette smoking and body mass index are independently associated with an elevated white blood cell count in both men and women.
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Inflammation is an important underlying mechanism in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, and an elevated resting heart rate underlies the process of atherosclerotic plaque formation. We hypothesized an association between resting heart rate and subclinical inflammation.
Resting heart rate was recorded at baseline in the KoGES-ARIRANG (Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study on Atherosclerosis Risk of Rural Areas in the Korean General Population) cohort study, and was then divided into quartiles. Subclinical inflammation was measured by white blood cell count and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. We used progressively adjusted regression models with terms for muscle mass, body fat proportion, and adiponectin in the fully adjusted models. We examined inflammatory markers as both continuous and categorical variables, using the clinical cut point of the highest quartile of white blood cell count (≥7,900/mm3) and ≥3 mg/dL for high-sensitivity C-reactive protein.
Participants had a mean age of 56.3±8.1 years and a mean resting heart rate of 71.4±10.7 beats/min; 39.1% were men. In a fully adjusted model, an increased resting heart rate was significantly associated with a higher white blood cell count and higher levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in both continuous (P for trend <0.001) and categorical (P for trend <0.001) models.
An increased resting heart rate is associated with a higher level of subclinical inflammation among healthy Korean people.
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