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

Purpose: To characterize the association between major cardiovascular diseases risk among Saudis and their body mass index (BMI).

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted (April to June 2015) to investigate the expected 10 years risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) among Saudi subjects (age range 20-70 years) using Framingham Risk Score (FRS) with respect to their BMI (analyzed October 2015).

Results: In the present study there was a significant association between the 10 years risk of developing CVD and BMI. The results revealed an increase in BMI contributing to significant increase in the 10 years risk of CVD 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 CVD 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. In addition, 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.

Conclusions: BMI strongly associated with the expected 10 years FRS for CVD. Moreover, there was 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.