Cardiology Letters 2020, 29(3):138-147

The role of somatic characteristics in the assessment of cardiometabolic risk in adolescents

Regecová V¹, Bališ P¹, Gerová Z²

¹ Centra experimentálnej medicíny Slovenskej akadémie vied, Ústav normálnej a patologickej fyziológie, Bratislava

² Regionálneho úradu verejného zdravotníctva Slovenskej republiky Bratislava, Slovenská republika

Aim: In this study, we investigated which somatic characteristics are most associated with certain components of metabolic syndrome (MS), and compared their efficacy in identifying individuals at risk.

Subjects and methods: We analyzed records of 1222 adolescents aged 14-18 years (median = 17 years) obtained within the project "Respect for Health", which included data on serum lipids - total (TC) and HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides (TAG) and blood pressure (BP). The body composition was characterized by indices derived from measured anthropometric parameters (AP): body mass index (BMI), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), fat mass index (FMI), relative fat mass index (RFM) and a body shape index (ABSI). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to examine the potential of the above indices to identify the risk of high BP or undesirable lipid levels comparing the area (AUC) under the curves of the respective index separately. This was to examine the potential of the above indices to identify the risk of high BP or undesirable lipid levels comparing the area (AUC) under the curves of the respective index separately for TC, HDL-C, TAG, and BP. The interaction between components of MS and body characteristics was evaluated using odds ratio (OR) with confidence intervals (CI).

Results: Abdominal obesity was confirmed in almost all (90-95%) obese and 60% of overweight adolescents: 70% of them had also an excessive fat mass, so their classification by BMI was adequate. Blood pressure progressively increased with BMI values but the impact of indicators of excessive fat and abdominal obesity was lower. However they have been shown to be the strong predictors of risk lipid levels, particularly TC and TAG, and their significant impact was also seen at a normal weight (RFM: OR 4.1; CI 1.60-10.25; WHtR: OR 4.1; CI 1.8-9.4.).

Conclusion: In general, overweight and obesity, defined by deviations from the BMI standards (z-score), were the essential discriminatory factors of overall cardiometabolic risk in adolescents. The presented criteria for determining abdominal obesity may, according to our results, improve the identification of subjects at risk. Fig. 1, Tab. 6, Ref. 64, on-line-full text (Free, PDF) www.cardiologylettters.sk

Keywords: adolescents; blood pressure; metabolic syndrome; abdominal obesity; body mass index

Published: March 1, 2020  Show citation