Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Obesity and its related diseases like high blood pressure are the main reason of coronary heart diseases that are the second main cause of mortality in I.R of IRAN. The significant rise of obesity in the last decade resulted in corresponding increase in the prevalence of hypertension.

Objective: To detect obesity and hypertension, and the relationship between them among Semnanian people, Iran, 2007

Methods: In this cross sectional survey we studied 388 (169 male and 219 female) 40–65 year-old on the basis of a stratified random sampling. Weight, height and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) were measured based on standard methods and BMI was calculated. Overweight and obesity were defined as 30>BMI ≥25 and BMI ≥30 respectively. High blood pressure was defined, as systolic BP >140 mmHg or diastolic BP>90 mmHg. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS soft ware version 11.2.

Results: Mean of BMI among males and females were 26.8, 30.6 kg/m² respectively with significant differences (P=0.0001).The rate of overweight and obesity in total population was 79.3% (CI 95%: 75.2–83.3%) and among males and females were 68.5% (CI 95%:61.3–75.6%) and 87.5% (CI 95%:83.1–91.9%) respectively and the difference was significant (P=0.0001). The rate of high blood pressure among obese, overweight and others were 26.1%, 20.5% and 8% respectively and the differences were statistically significant (P=0.007). Significant linear correlation were detected between systolic blood pressure with BMI, and with age(r=0.11, P=0.02 and r=0.28, P=0.0001 respectively) and diastolic blood pressure with BMI, and with age (r=0.20, P=0.0001 and r=0.16, P=0.001 respectively). After adjusting the results for age, this significant correlation was detected again between BMI with systolic and diastolic blood pressure (P=0.004, P=0.0001 respectively).

Conclusion: The prevalence of overweight, obesity and high blood pressure are high in this community, especially among women and urgent attention to suitable interventional program is a priority in health sector.