Nutritional status, prevalence of some metabolic risk factors for cardiovascular disease and BMI-metabolic-risk sub-phenotypes in an adult Nigerian population

Studies have shown that metabolic risk factors associated with increased body mass index are the critical factors that confer risk for the chronic diseases associated with fat. The prevalence of these disorders is scarcely reported in Nigeria. We evaluated 542 adult Nigerians for nutritional status, serum total cholesterol, fasting blood glucose level and hypertension, using standard anthropometric and clinical methods. The results show that 32.1%, 11.8%, 19.6%, 11.8% and 60.7% of the population, irrespective of sex were over-weight, obese, hyperglycaemic, hypercholesterolemic and hypertensive respectively. Approximately 33% of the obese population were metabolically-healthy obese-like (MHO-like) while 8.6% of the normal BMI population were metabolically-obese normal-weight-like (MONW-like). Other sub-phenotypes were present at rates of 5 – 32% in the population. The results are discussed and compared to figures from other populations. Our data apparently supports the view that the assessment of metabolic risks for chronic diseases, irrespective of body mass index, may be more useful in identifying individuals or groups at risk of these disorders.