Developing appropriate anthropometric indicators for early detection of metabolic syndrome and risk of chronic non-communicable diseases in Jimma university workers, Southwest Ethiopia

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.