Association between zinc deficiency and obesity among a sample of adult in Al-Najaf city, Iraq

Abstract

Background: Obesity has become a major health problem, defined as an abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat in adipose tissue and is diagnosed with a BMI ≥30 kg/m2. The study aimed to find the correlation between zinc deficiency and obesity, also, to study the association between obesity and different socio-demographic factors. Material and Methods: A case-control study was conducted to achieve the aims of the study that has been conducted from the beginning of December 2021 until June 2022. The size of the sample comprises 140 participants who were equally divided into two groups, obese group (body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m2) and the control group, (BMI18.5 - 24.9 kg/m2). All participants were taken randomly from adult peoples ages ranged between (18-65) years in Al-Najaf Governorate. Results: The association between serum zinc and obesity was significant (p-value = 0.041, O. ratio (95%CI) = 2.01(1.02-3.97)). The correlation between serum zinc level with both BMI and waist hip ratio (WHR) was negatively correlation (r = -0.241, r = -0.033, respectively). The association between obesity and socio-demographics characteristics was only significant with gender and marital status (P-value =0.002, 0.016, respectively), while the other characteristics were not significant (p-value = >0.05).