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Overweight, obesity increase cardiometabolic risk factor prevalence
The prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors differs across weight classes with risk increasing among adults with overweight or obesity, but the number and type of risk factors vary by age and ethnic group, even among those with greater weight, according to findings published in Preventing Chronic Disease.
Gregory A. Nichols, PhD, senior investigator in the Center for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente, and colleagues evaluated data from the Patient Outcomes Research to Advance Learning (PORTAL) weight cohort on 1,294,174 adults with overweight (52.5%) or obesity (47.5%) to determine the prevalence of four specific cardiometabolic risk factors (elevated blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol and prediabetes) among them.
The most prevalent cardiometabolic risk factor was elevated BP (59.9%), followed by prediabetes (47.2%), low HDL cholesterol (33.7%) and elevated triglycerides (32.2%). Cardiometabolic risk factor prevalence increased across the overweight and obesity classes, except for the triglyceride risk factor, in which prevalence for obesity class III was lower than that of obesity classes I and II.
None of the four cardiometabolic risk factors were present in 18.6% of participants with overweight, 9.6% of participants with obesity and 5.8% of participants with morbid obesity.
There was a 90% greater probability of having at least one risk factor among participants with obesity class I compared with participants with overweight. Further, compared with participants with overweight, participants with obesity class II had a threefold greater probability and participants with obesity class III had a fourfold greater probability of having at least one risk factor. Men and participants with older age had a greater likelihood of having a cardiometabolic risk factor. Hispanic, Asian and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander participants were more likely to have at least one cardiometabolic risk factors, and black participants were 28% less likely vs. white participants.
“There is more variation in the number of cardiometabolic risk factors that overweight/obese patients have than you might think,” Nichols told Endocrine Today. “There may be overweight/obese patients for whom intensive weight-loss intervention might not provide as much benefit as others because their risk factors are not currently a concern. This was a cross-sectional study, so whether patients who do not currently have risk factors will continue to remain cardiometabolically healthy needs exploration. Whether long-term risk is really any different for people who don’t have risk factors now compared with people who do is not clear. In short, we need longitudinal studies of this topic.” – by Amber Cox
For more information:
Gregory A. Nichols, PhD, can be reached at Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente, 3800 N. Interstate Ave., Portland, OR 97227; email: greg.nichols@kpchr.org.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.