Anthropometric changes and their effects on cardiometabolic risk factors in rural populations in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to evaluate associations between anthropometric changes in five years with lipid and blood pressure levels in Brazilian rural population. This longitudinal study evaluated 387 individuals aged 18 to 75 residents of two rural communities. Demographic, lifestyle, anthropometric, biochemical and hemodynamic characteristics were assessed in 2004 and repeated in 2009. Multivariate linear regression was used. Positive change in BMI was associated with increased diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (β = 0.07; 95%CI: 0.03-0.11), low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C) (increase of 0.01% to 10%: β = 0.08; 95%CI: 0.02-0.14, more than 10% increase: β = 0.09; 95%CI: 0.01-0.16) and low density lipoprotein/high density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (LDL-C/HDL-C) (increase of 0.01% to 10%: β = 0.15; 95%CI: 0.06-0.25, more than 10% increase: β = 0.14; 95%CI: 0.02-0.25). Our results showed no association between positive changes in WC and lipid levels increase, only with blood pressure levels increase (SBP: β = 0.06; CI95%:0.02-0.10; DBP: β = 0.09; CI95%: 0.04;0.13). Positive changes in BMI are independent predictors of increased lipid and blood pressure levels and positive changes in WC of increased blood pressure.

Fatores de risco cardiovascular em uma população rural brasileira

“…After regression analysis, the variables that remained associated with the most significant number of cardiovascular risk factors were age and those related to excess body fat, such as TS, and especially WC, responsible for increasing the likelihood of farmers to have two or more risk factors. These results are compatible with other studies involving both rural and urban populations 8,10,32 .…”

“…A factor of concern is the progressive weight gain in the Brazilian population, including in rural populations 34 . Géa-Horta et al 8 identified, besides weight gain, a significant increase in LDL-C levels. LDL/ HDL ratio and SBP among the studied farmers.…”

“…Besides their exposure to diseases and diseases related to their professional activity, rural workers were also exposed to modifiable risk factors, strongly related to the development of chronic non-transmissible diseases 5 , putting at risk the health of this very important professional category to the Brazilian economy. It should be noted that rural workers, unlike the urban population, live in inland areas, which can hamper access to primary health care, knowledge of health care 8 and, consequently, more complex medical care, and lead to the vulnerability of these workers. Thus, it is necessary to implement policies that increase this people's access to health care.…”

“…In the field, modernization processes and the consequent changes in lifestyle and diet have also exposed rural workers to the increased risk of cardiovascular diseases due to elevated levels of lipids, glucose, overweight and accumulated abdominal fat in these workers [6][7][8] . Evidence suggests that the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors is higher in the rural population than in the urban population [9][10][11] and that the consequences of CVDs are one of the main reasons for absenteeism or non-performance of usual activities in this population 12 .…”

Features of translation of some rarely used anthropometric terms from Ukrainian into English

“…So they are useful not only for health assessment, but also are used in many fields: forensic medicine (to estimate the age of the subject) [13], forensic dentistry (it is an interdiscipline of forensic medicine and stomatology) for the identification of individual and age estimation [24], dentistry (anthropometric diagnostic methods of dentognathic anomaly, and there is potential correlation among number of teeth, chewing ability and anthropometric profile) [7,9,29], pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology [17,21,27], as well as for the diagnosis of overweight (important indicators of nutritional status in the children and adults) [11,16,20], for sports control [22] and for the standardization purpose [3,15,23,26,30]. The symptoms of many diseases are expressed in anthropometric changes [12].…”