Higher Socio-Economic Status (SES) is associated with the Traditional Risk Factors of Cardiovascular Diseases; Results of MASHAD Cohort Study

Abstract

Introduction and Objective: Socio-economic status has been shown to be associated with cardiovascular disease. We aimed to investigate the relationship between socio-economic status and traditional risk factors for cardiovascular diseases in the MASHAD cohort study drawn from a population sample in northeast Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, subjects were divided into three categories of socio-economic status (SES) based on their education level, employment status and monthly income using latent class analysis (LCA). The three SES classes were compared in terms of cardiovascular diseases risk factors. P value less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Results: A total number of 9704 participants were included in the study. Participants with a low SES had significantly lower means of age, physical activity level, waist circumference, systolic blood pressure and LDL-C, and higher means of weight, and hip circumferences. Also, the prevalence of smoking, hypertension and metabolic syndrome were lower in low SES group than the two other groups. Logistic regression showed that the chance of obesity in the high SES class was 1.3-fold higher than for the middle SES class. Moreover, the chance of metabolic syndrome and hypertension in the low SES class was respectively 0.81 and 0.83 of the middle SES class. Conclusion: The different levels of socio-economic status were associated with different CVD risk factor profiles, it is may therefore be necessary to develop more specific and personalized preventive policies for populations in each socio-economic class.