Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Jun 26, 2022; 14(6): 363-371
Published online Jun 26, 2022. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v14.i6.363
Association of obesity anthropometric indices with hypertension, diabetes mellitus and hypertriglyceridemia in apparently healthy adult Nigerian population
Anil Sirisena, Basil Okeahialam
Anil Sirisena, Department of Radiology, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos 930001, Nigeria
Basil Okeahialam, Department of Medicine, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos 930001, Nigeria
Author contributions: Sirisena A generated data, analyzed data and contributed to write up; Okeahialam B conceptualized and supervised project, wrote up the paper.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Research and Ethics Committee of Jos University Teaching Hospital, No. JUTH/DCS/ADM/127/XIXI/6257.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code and data set are available from the first author at shalom2k3@yahoo.com. Patients did not give consent for data sharing but the presented data are anonymized and risk of identification is nil.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Basil Okeahialam, FACP, MBBS, Professor, Department of Medicine, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos (Lamingo), Jos 930001, Nigeria. basokeam@yahoo.com
Received: December 9, 2021
Peer-review started: December 9, 2021
First decision: January 25, 2022
Revised: March 18, 2022
Accepted: June 3, 2022
Article in press: June 3, 2022
Published online: June 26, 2022
Processing time: 193 Days and 2.6 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

For decades, body mass index (BMI) has been the most widely accepted index of adiposity and most commonly used for defining obesity recommended by the WHO but it can be affected by age, gender, and ethnicity.

Research motivation

In most population-based cardiovascular risk assessment studies found in the literature, researchers selected two or more of traditional obesity among waist circumference, waist-to-height ratio, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. Anthropometric measures (BMI) to determine the level of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. This is because they are simple, non-invasive and cost-effective measurement procedures. However, as shown in the literature, these anthropometric measures of obesity have not been found to be systematically superior to others in terms of their discriminative power for CVD, as they may have some inherent clinical pitfalls associated with them in obtaining an accurate diagnosis.

Research objectives

We sought to identify the best anthropometric index predictive of each of the disease conditions; hypertension, diabetes mellitus and hypertriglyceridemia for our chosen cross-sectional population study group and to determine their respective cut-off values.

Research methods

This was a cross-sectional study that included 221 consenting apparently healthy adult Nigerians 18 years and above who were not pregnant at enrolment. After signing the consent form, the participants were given a questionnaire to fill indicating their sex, age, state of origin, smoking status (Yes or No), alcohol use (Yes or No), physical inactivity (Yes or No) and the family history of CVD (Yes or No). Height and weight were measured as well as the other anthropometric indices using a measuring tape and an abdominometer. The blood pressures were measured with an Omron M2 basic automatic digital blood pressure monitor while fasting blood glucose and triglycerides were determined with an SD lipidocare dual analyzer.

Research results

In this study, 221 consenting subjects (82 males and 139 females) of aged between 18-75 years with a mean age of 36.9 ± 11.4 years participated. From the questionnaires, the percentages of traditional risk factors such as status of smoking, alcohol use, physical inactivity and family history of CVD were found to be 2.3%, 17.2%, 31.7% and 24.4% respectively.

Research conclusions

Anthropometric measures used in this study were significantly associated with the CVD risk factors studied, with abdominal height (AH) emerging as the most predictive measure.

Research perspectives

Using this simple measure of AH, large-scale community population studies are recommended to predict and differentiate high-risk individuals for possible lifestyle modification procedures, clinical interventions, and treatments to minimize cardiometabolic mortality and mortality. Morbidity as a preventive measure. This is necessary given our relatively small sample size and convenient sampling method.