Evaluation of cardiovascular risk factors in women referring to health centers in Tabriz, Iran, 2017

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality among men and women around the world. The aim of this study was to investigate major cardiovascular risk factors in women living in the Tabriz petrochemical region, Iran during spring 2017. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a sample of 152 women aged 30-55 years was selected from who attended health center in Tabriz, Iran. Anthropometric measurements, blood pressure, daily dietary intakes and fasting serum lipid profile, oxidized LDL (ox-LDL) and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) were evaluated. Results: The prevalence of overweight, general and abdominal obesity (based on Body mass index [BMI] and waist circumference [WC]) was 34.2%, 52.6%, and 73.7%, respectively. Eleven point two percent and 4.6% of women had pre-hypertension based on systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). High serum triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), low- density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were determined in 32.5%, 25.7%, 17.8% and 56.6% of subjects, respectively. The median of serum ox-LDL concentration was 3181.5 ng/L. Sixty-five point eight percent of participants had high hs-CRP levels. In the multiple-adjusted quintile regression analysis, significant relationships were found between serum ox-LDL and age (B = 96.7, P = 0.003) and between serum hs-CRP with diastolic blood pressure (B = 0.1, P = 0.083) and TG (B = 0.01, P = 0.088). Conclusion: The high prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in the studied women warrants more public health attention. The results also suggest that aging was associated with high serum ox-LDL and increased serum hs-CRP levels, which may reflect enhanced DBP and serum TG.