Abstract:
Background: Metabolic syndrome is a condition that includes group of coexisting metabolic
risk factors specific for cardiovascular disease.Also it is becoming an important problem in low
income countries since few years back. Review of available evidences showed that the
international cut-off for different anthropometric measures of body composition is not
appropriate for Ethiopians because of differences in body frames. For early detection,
prevention, and treatment of the metabolic syndromeknowledge of anthropometric indicators
based on locally driven data is crucialin resource limited settings like Ethiopia.
Objectives: This study is designed to develop appropriate anthropometric indicator for early
detection of metabolic syndrome amongacademic and administrative staffs of Jimma University.
Method: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted on JU workers from
February- April 2015 in Jimma University. Data were collected by five trained nurses. Structured
questionnaire containing the relevant history, anthropometry measurement, laboratory data and
body composition analyses using air displacement Platysmography was used. Data were entered
using Epidata version 3.1 and exported to SPSS 20 version for analysis. Receiver operating
characteristic analysis and area under curve were used to identify the sensitivity, specificity and
youden‟s index of anthropometric indices. Cut-off point for the detection of metabolic risk was
identified.Significant association was declared at p<0.05.
Result: Body fat percent highly and significantly correlated with BMI in women and with Waist
Circumference in men. AUC for BMI to detect body fattens is higher than others on female
participants. The appropriate cut-off valuesto predict the presence of multiple metabolic risk
factors for BMI, WC, WHtR and WHR were 26.1, 80.57, 0.52, 0.88 for females and 22.87, 80.9,
0.49 and 0.88 for males, respectively.
Conclusion and recommendation: Waist circumference is better,in predicting the presence of
multiple metabolic risk factors.These findings indicate to strengthening early and on time
preventive life style modification program based on the revised cutoffs.
