Check the Neck for Heart Risk

March 12, 2009— -- When a doctor determines your risk for heart disease, he or she might look at your weight, cholesterol level and blood pressure. But soon, they may also look at your neck.

Independent of other factors, the width of your neck may play a role in determining your heart disease risk, according to researchers with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, who presented their data Wednesday at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Fla.

"It's very interesting that neck circumference was associated with [higher measures of] heart disease risk," said Dr. Vijay Nambi, a cardiologist at the Baylor College of Medicine, who was not involved with the research.

He noted that if the results of the preliminary research hold up after further study, it could provide a novel approach in determining a patient's risk.

"We normally end up struggling with trying to find out what are the best measures of obesity and fat?" said Nambi.

Since this is the first presentation of the data, Sarah Rosner Preis, a postdoctoral fellow with NHLBI and the study's lead author, noted that the findings are preliminary. Her findings were that a wider neck was associated with riskier levels of other measurements for heart disease -- such as higher systolic blood pressure and lower "good" HDL cholesterol -- but not heart disease itself.

Still, the connection could be an important one if the finding is borne out in future research. And if true, heart disease would join a list of other diseases linked to a thicker neck.

"To our knowledge, there has been no study that has specifically examined the association between neck circumference and risk of heart disease," she said. "Prior studies have suggested that neck circumference may be associated with diabetes, insulin resistance and hypertension."