High Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome among Kuwaiti Adults —A Wake-Up Call for Public Health Intervention

Abstract

The socio-economic development which followed the discovery of oil resources brought about considerable changes in the food habits and lifestyle of the Kuwaiti population. Excessive caloric intake and decreased energy expenditure due to a sedentary lifestyle have led to a rapid increase in obesity, diabetes and other non-communicable chronic diseases in the population. In this paper, we examine the prevalence of the Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) among Kuwaiti adults (≥20 years) using data from the first national nutrition survey conducted between July 2008 and November 2009. The prevalence of MetS was 37.7% in females and 34.2% in males by NCEP criteria, whereas the values were 40.1% in females and 41.7% in males according to IDF criteria. Prevalence of MetS increased with age and was higher in females than males. The high prevalence of the MetS in Kuwaiti adults warrants urgent public health measures to prevent morbidity and mortality due to cardiovascular complications in the future.

Factors associated with obesity among Saudi women of reproductive age in Jeddah City

“…Comparing our rate of abdominal obesity (25.1%) to two previous national surveys by Al-Saif et al (2002) and Al-Nozha et al, (2005) among women in aged 30-70 years using WC cut-off point (>88cm), indicated that their rates in women (66.1%, and 55.2% respectively) were much higher than our rates [40,41]. Also, our rate of abdominal obesity was lower than that of some other Middle East countries (≥20 years of age), such as, Kuwait (≥20 years of age), and Iran (≥15-65 years of age) (59.7% & 53.2% respectively) [42,43].…”

Benchmarking the health of health sciences students at Kuwait University: a towards a cultue of health

“…Second, students emerging from these health professional programmes need to support the overall health of their patients and their communities; one way is to serve as credible role models for health promotion (12,13). This is especially true in the current health climate where NCDs that are largely lifestyle related are the leading causes of premature death and disability in the Middle East including Kuwait (4,(14)(15)(16).…”

Concordancia diagnóstica entre siete criterios de síndrome metabólico en adultos con sobrepeso y obesidad

“…Existe un consenso en el campo médico de que el término de SM es aceptable por la condición de la presencia de múltiples factores de riesgo de ECV y DM2 (1)(2)(3)10,17,(25)(26)(27) ; sin embargo, existen diferencias en las frecuencias de SM al aplicar distintas definiciones.…”

“…La prevalencia del SM es mucho más dramática cuando incrementa el IMC (1,2,15) . En Kuwait, la frecuencia del SM en obesos fue del 76,9% (IDF) (27) y en Cuba en una cohorte de adultos donde el 78% de ellos presentaban sobrepeso y obesidad, la presencia del SM (NCEP-ATPIII) fue del 58,2% (28) y del 69,5% en sujetos obesos (16) .…”