Correlation between Obesity and Coronary Heart Disease Risk among Saudi Subjects at Madinah Region

Abstract

The study aimed to characterize the major cardiovascular risk factors using Framingham Risk Score (FRS) among Saudis. A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the expected 10 years FRS for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) among Saudi subjects. In the present study there was a significant association between the 10 years risk of developing CHD and BMI. The results revealed an increase in BMI contributing to significant increase in the 10 years risk of CHD among males. The overall distribution of FRS among males regardless the BMI category as a percentage of the total male subjects revealed that males were at low, medium and high CHD risk of 71.4%, 14.27% and 14.3%, respectively. However, female subjects showed 91.5%, 4.8% and 3.6% at low, medium and high FRS, respectively. Moreover, significant increases in the Odd ratio amounting to 4.58 and 5.24 among intermediate and high risk males in comparison with female ones, respectively. BMI strongly correlates with the expected 10 years FRS for CVD. Also there is a gender specific susceptablity for CVD risk among Saudi males compared to female ones. Socioeconomic, behavioral, awareness about healthy choices and genetic characteristics of obesity should be taken in consideration since extrapolating other population's studies to Saudi one might be misleading.

Conventional Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors in Shahedieh Cohort Population: Yazd, Central Part of Iran

“…Ahmari et al 2017 in their study in Saudi Arabia also showed that the prevalence of CHD was signi cantly related to age and gender (22), so that the prevalence of the disease was twice as high in men than women. In other studies that calculated the risk of CHD, men were at higher risk than women (4,(23)(24)(25).…”