The Effect of Overweight to Cardiovascular Risk Factors among Korean Adolescents

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular complications develop over a long time, and childhood and adolescent obesity often do not present clinical diseases. We evaluated the effect of overweight to cardiovascular risk factor profiles to clustering in Korean adolescents. METHODS: Nationwide population based surveys and health examinations were done in 1998. Among the subjects, adolescents aged 10 to 18 were included for this study. Age and gender specific BMI percentile was calculated by Korean reference. Cardiovascular risk factors were defined as values above 95th percentile (specific for age, gender) for the group as a whole. RESULTS: The prevalence of obesity over 95th percentile was 5.5% among 1,634 adolescents. Obesity increased with adverse levels of risk factors. Adolescents with a BMI above 95th percentile were 6.3, 4.8, 9.8, 5.1, and 4.9 times more likely to have adverse levels of systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, and HDL-cholesterol, respectively, than normal weight subjects. Obese boys had higher prevalence of hypertension than obese girls. The number of risk factor profiles increased with obesity, but not in linear pattern. Sixty percent of overweight above 95th percentile had risk factors, while 23% of normal weight group did. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescent obesity in Korea was highly associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors, and clustering. The prevalence of risk factors increased substantially above 75th percentile, and even among overweight above 95th percentile adolescents. The risk of clustering increased BMI above 85th percentile.