A new study led by researchers in the United States has found that a guy’s beer belly could mean trouble for his heart.

The researchers who presented their study on Monday at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting in Chicago, said belly fat is linked to changes in heart structure that can contribute to heart failure.

“Abdominal obesity, a high waist-to-hip ratio, is associated with more concerning cardiac remodeling patterns than high body mass index alone,” lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Erley, a radiology resident at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, said in a news release.

A beer belly appears to contribute to changes “where the heart muscle thickens but the overall size of the heart doesn’t increase, leading to smaller cardiac volumes,” Erley said.

“In fact, the inner chambers become smaller, so the heart holds and pumps less blood. This pattern impairs the heart’s ability to relax properly, which eventually can lead to heart failure.”

For the new study, researchers analysed MRI images for more than 2,200 adults 46 to 78 without known heart disease. They compared these images to the participants’ BMI and waistto-hip ratio.

Results showed that high levels of belly fat were associated with thickening of the heart muscle and smaller heart chambers, reported the ‘Newsmaxhealth’.