Prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its association with CT-based central adiposity measures: A cross-sectional study at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan

Objectives To assess the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) and association of central obesity measures such as body mass index (BMI), visceral fat adiposity (VFA) and superficial fat adiposity (SFA) with MS, diabetes (DM) and hypertension (HTN). Design Cross-sectional study design. Setting Tertiary care hospital in Pakistan. Participants 165 participants. There were 124 male participants and 41 female participants of Pakistani population. All participants above 18 years, who had unenhanced CT abdomen examination and relevant blood workup, were included. Patients with a known clinical history of coronary artery disease, HTN and DM as well as pregnant patients were excluded. Interventions VFA and SFA were estimated, at the level of the umbilicus. Data of BMI, MS, DM and HTN were extracted from patient files. Data for MS, DM and HTN were recorded as binary variables. Outcome measures The primary outcome measures were the prevalence of MS and the association of MS, DM and HTN with gender, VFA, SFA and BMI. P value of <0.05 was taken as significant with CI of 95%. Results The prevalence of MS was 29.7%. There was a significant association of MS, DM and HTN with VFA, SFA and BMI. In gender-based analysis 48.7% of the female participants had MS. In subset analysis, 47% of male subjects in the third tertile of VFA revealed significant association with MS (p value <0.05) while only 32.7% of subjects in the obesity category of BMI had MS. SFA revealed a significant association with DM only (p value <0.5). Conclusion In conclusion, VFA shows a significant association with MS, DM and HTN. Considering these results, further studies with a larger sample size are warranted to generate gender-based cut-offs for VFA for obesity screening purposes.