Obesity indices predict hypertension among indigenous adults in Krau Wildlife Reserve, Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

BackgroundThe disease burden of indigenous peoples has been augmented by the rising prevalence of obesity and hypertension in this population. This study assessed the ability of obesity indices to predict hypertension among indigenous adults of Peninsular Malaysia.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, 482 adults (223 men, 259 women) aged ≥18 years old were measured for body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-height ratio (WHtR), waist-hip ratio (WHR), and blood pressure. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to determine the predictive ability of obesity indices for hypertension in men and women. Gender-specific logistic regression analyses were done to examine the association between obesity, defined by BMI, WC, WHtR and WHR, and hypertension.ResultsPrevalence of hypertension was 25.5%. Overall, WHtR was the best predictor of the presence of hypertension, in both men and women. The optimal WHtR cut-off values for hypertension were 0.45 and 0.52 in men and women, respectively. Obese adults with WHtR ≥0.5 had about two times increased odds of having hypertension compared to non-obese adults.ConclusionsWHtR may serve as a simple and inexpensive screening tool to identify individuals with hypertension in this relatively difficult to reach population.

The Importance of Some New Clinical Indices in the Evaluation of Childhood Obesity

“…It is reported that this index gives particularly a notion about being overweight or obese among adults. However, there are many studies performed on adults that do not recommend BMI, instead propose other obesity indices for various purposes such as prediction of hypertension, cardiovascular disease risk classification or as discriminators of in the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome (Chua, Zalilah, Haemamalar, Norhasmah, & Geeta, 2017;Patel et al, 2017;Motamed et al, 2016;Motamed et al, 2017;Fan et al, 2016). Besides, a very recent study has reported that LDL-cholesterol, which is found to be elevated in obese individuals and also known as a risk factor for CVDs is not associated with BMI or waist circumference (Oda, 2017).…”

“…Some studies inform that body mass index (BMI) have no value to predict hypertension (Chua, Zalilah, Haemamalar, Norhasmah, & Geeta, 2017), the incidence of coronary artery disease in patients with essential hypertension (Tsioufis et al, 2016), the low maximal oxygen consumption-a measure of cardiorespiratory capacity (Mondal & Mishra, 2017), clinical severity and prognosis of acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (Jelavic, Babic & Pintaric, 2017), to identify adults with cardiovascular risk factors (Patel et al, 2017), to determine the best usual discriminator index of obesity to diagnose diabetes mellitus (Motamed et al, 2016). In a similar manner, there are also reports informing waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio have no predictive value for coronary artery disease with essential hypertension and for the identification of children with elevated blood pressure, respectively (Tsioufis et al, 2016;Ma et al, 2016).…”

“…Obesity indices have recently been a point of interest during the investigation of obesity, risk factors of obesity and obesity-related diseases such as metabolic syndrome, coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction and type 2 diabetes (Motamed et al, 2016;Motamed et al, 2017;Mondal & Mishra, 2017;Chua, Zalilah, Haemamalar, Norhasmah, & Geeta, 2017;Patel et al, 2017;Abulmeaty et al, 2017;Tsioufis et al, 2016;Jelavic, Babic & Pintaric, 2017;Liu, Ma, Lou & Zhu, 2016;Tao et al, 2016;Oguoma et al, 2016). So far a great number of studies have been performed on adults with different obesity grades, however research performed on pediatric population ) is scarce.…”

Do not neglect the indigenous peoples when reporting health and nutrition issues of the socio-economically disadvantaged populations in Malaysia

“…There is also accumulating evidence of metabolic risks (i.e. impaired glucose intolerance, hypertension, central obesity, hyperlipidaemia) in the Orang Asli adults [41][42][43][44][45][46]. The rising prevalence of metabolic risks could lead to increasing occurrence of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases in the indigenous community.…”

Predictores de riesgo cardiometabólico en adolescentes de Quito

“…Los estudios de mayor relevancia sobre el r-CT han sido efectuados prioritariamente en personas norteamericanas, europeas o asiáticas, que tienen características étnicas diferentes a las de los latinoamericanos [32][33][34][35][36][37]. En América Latina, donde la presencia de obesidad y riesgos cardiometabólicos están en incremento, poco se ha investigado sobre la utilidad del r-CT para el diagnóstico de obesidad y riesgos cardiometabólicos, con respecto a otros índices como CC e IMC, y los resultados son heterogéneos [28,[38][39][40].…”