Association of anthropometric indices with cardiometabolic risk factors in adult Bangladeshi population

This study examined the association of anthropometric measures related to excess body fat such as body-mass-index (BMI), waist-hip ratio (WHR), waist-height-ratio (WHtR) with cardiometabolic risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia among adult mass population in Bangladesh. A large scale cross-sectional study was carried out during August–November 2017 among the patients (male 644, female 556), who didn't have any major illness, visiting the outpatient department of a tertiary level government hospital in capital Dhaka city. To examine the association between metabolic profile and anthropometric indices two-sample t-test and multivariable logistic regression were performed separately for each risk factor and combination of them (none, 1, 2+ risk factors) after adjusting for the effect of age and sex. Further area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve was used to assess the performance of the indices in predicting cardiometabolic risks. All these indices are found to be significantly associated with each of the risk factors. Of them, very strong positive association is found between WHtR and hypertension with odd ratio (OR) of 1.39 (95% confidence interval, CI: 1.05–3.93) and WHR and dyslipidemia (OR:1.79 with 95% CI: 1.19–3.32) were found. Similar findings were observed when the predictive performance was assessed with the estimated area under the ROC curve. Furthermore, all these indices showed stronger association of having more than one risk factors compared to those having only one risk factor. Of them, the WHR showed relatively stronger association having both one (OR: 2.53 with 95% CI: 1.13–7.19) and multiple risk factors (OR: 3.11 with 95% CI: 1.74–5.44). Findings suggest that for reducing the cardiometabolic risks it is essential to control of having excess body fat measured using BMI, WHtR and WHR. Therefore, urgent policies and programs should be initiated to make the people aware of keeping control bodyweight and excess fat. •This study used dataset from a large study recently conducted in a tertiary level hospital.•The accuracy of the data is very high, because the tools were reviewed and validated by expert panel.•Rigorous statistical analyses have been conducted to provide data driven evidence.