Lipid Profile in Opium Users: Results of Fasa PERSIAN Cohort Study, First Phase

Abstract

Background: One of the main health problems in many societies is the increase of opium abuse which correlated with many problems such as cardiovascular disease. The goal of our study is to evaluate the correlation of opium use with blood lipoproteins as risk factors of CVD.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study on participants of the first phase of the PERSIAN Cohort study who were 35 -70 years old. Demographic characteristics, history of smoking, alcohol, and opium consumption, medical history and medications were asked and checklists were filled out. level of physical activity and fat intake was registered. lipoprotein profiles were investigated by blood sampling. IBM SPSS Statistics v21 was used to analyze the correlation of opium and lipid profile and the significant level was <0.05.Results: From 9300 participants with a mean age of 48.06±9.44 years old, 49.6% were male. About 24.1% of participants used opium. The level of total cholesterol (adjusted p= 0.02) and HDL (adjusted p= 0.04) in people who used opium was significantly lower than others. But, the level of triglyceride (p=0.11) and LDL (adjusted p= 0.06) was not different in users and non-users. LDL (OR=0.8, adjusted p= 0.009) and total cholesterol (OR=0.81, adjusted p= 0.007) had normal level in people who used opium than non-consuming people.Conclusion: This study showed that there is correlation between opium usage and lower level of total cholesterol and LDL, however the lower level of HDL in normal range was seen in opium users.