Abstract:
Background: Evidence suggests that middle and low-income countries such as Ethiopia are
facing the growing epidemic of both communicable and non-communicable diseases creating
a burden on their economy and healthcare system. The increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases is attributed to sedentarism, lifestyle changes, nutritional transition,
and the presence of other cardiometabolic risk factors. Therefore this study was designed to
assess the prevalence and association of overweight, obesity, and cardio-metabolic risks and
to explore if there was any agreement among the anthropometric measurements among the
academic employees of the University of Gondar, Ethiopia.
Methods: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted using the WHO
stepwise approach and recommendations on 381 academic staff of the university. In
addition, physical measurements such as weight, height, waist and hip circumferences,
and biochemical measures such as blood pressure and fasting blood glucose level
(peripheral blood samples by finger puncture) were measured using standardized tools.
Results: The mean age of the participants was 33.5 (95% CI: 32.7, 34.2) years. The
prevalence of obesity among the study participants calculated by body mass index, waist
circumference (WC), waist-height ratio (WHtR), and waist-hip ratio (WHR) was 13.1%,
33.6%, 51.9%, and 58.5% respectively. The prevalence of diabetes was 4.7% among which
1.3% was not diagnosed prior to this study. About 53 (13.9%) of the study sample were
found to be hypertensive (HTN) (6.3% known versus 29 7.6% newly diagnosed). Among the
participants, 39.4% and 23.4% were found to be pre-hypertensive and pre-diabetic respectively. WC was significantly associated with hypertension (AOR = 5.14; 2.503, 9.72), preDM (AOR = 4.03; 2.974, 5.96), DM (AOR = 3.29; 1.099, 6.01). In addition, WHtR was
significantly associated with Pre-HTN (AOR = 2.69; 1.49, 4.58), HTN (AOR = 2.066; 1.008,
6.31), and DM (AOR = 1.855; 0.76, 4.32). On the contrary, both WHR and general obesity
measured by BMI were not significantly associated with pre-HTN, HTN, pre-DM and
DM groups.
Conclusion: This study results revealed the variable prevalence between general obesity
and the anthropometric indices (IDF cutoff) defining central obesity; WC, WHtR, and
WHR among the participants. The result of this study suggests that the constructs of
central obesity, not BMI has to be used to screen risks of cardio-metabolic risks among
Ethiopians.
