Correlation of Anthropometric Measurements and Cardiovascular Risk Factors among Medical Students in Ebonyi State University, Nigeria

Background: Anthropometric measurement involves measurement of different parameters which include the height, weight and body mass index. These parameters helped in determining the risk factor associated with cardiovascular diseases. There is highly suspected association between the anthropometric measurements with cardiovascular diseases. Objectives: This study was designed to assess the relationship between the anthropometric measurement and cardiovascular risk factors. Methodology: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study and a stratified random sampling technique was used; the strata were made up of various levels of study comprising 100-600 levels. A sample size of 294 was gotten. Data was collected using questionnaire. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23.0 software for descriptive statistics. Results: Boys and girls had almost the same mean age 22.13 ± 3.27 and 22.90 3.47 respectively. The males weighed more than the females with a mean weight of 69.52±11.19. The mean height for the males is 1.72 ± 0.79 were higher than that of the female 1.67 ± 0.069. The systolic and diastolic pressure for the male 119.51 ± 8.23 and 84.31 ± 60.46 respectively were all higher than those of the females 116.77 ± 12.83 and 78.74 ± 9.38 respectively. Males had a mean BMI of 23.15 ± 23.15 while that of the females was 22.73 ± 4.26. Only 1 (0.7%) of the males were obese while none of the female were obese. The females had the higher waist to hip ratio 0.84 ± 0.31 than that of the males 0.8381 ± 0.04. Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HC), waist to hip ratio (WHR), waist to height ratio (WHtR) ranges from 0 to 1 with 1 showing a strong association and 0 no association. Conclusion: The study came to the conclusion that there was direct significance relationship was seen between anthropometric values and cardiovascular risk factors. The best anthropometric parameters for prediction of cardiovascular risk factors amongst medical students was seen to be BMI which is best suited for use in the screening. Hence the need for attention to be paid to actionable health care policies and plan to keep the risk of cardiovascular complications at bay to the barest minimum.