Chinese people are more likely to face high blood pressure and other health risks as a result of higher body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference than people from other racial and ethnic groups, according to a researchers from the Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, China. The findings were reported in the paper, ‘Chinese Adults Are More Susceptible to Effects of Overall Obesity and Fat Distribution on Cardiometabolic Risk Factors’, published in Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
"Our study demonstrated that Chinese adults were more susceptible to the effects of overall obesity and abdominal fat accumulation on blood pressure and triglycerides than those in other racial and ethnic populations," said study author, Dr Weiqing Wang of the Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, China. "These racial and ethnic differences in susceptibility of obesity-related health problems should be noticed while screening for high-risk individuals using BMI and waist circumference."
The researchers analysed a total of 126,284 participants from a major national Chinese study and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in the US and compared cardiometabolic risk factors among different races and ethnicities.
They reported that residual waist circumference was significantly associated with all the cardiometabolic risk factors in Mainland Chinese, and most of the factors in Non-Hispanic White and Non-Hispanic Black adults, but not in the other races/ethnicities. The standardised regression coefficients of the associations between obesity metrics and cardiometabolic factors showed that the obesity metrics had greater impact on systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and triglyceride in Chinese adults than those of other racial/ethnic groups.
The research received funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Shanghai Municipal Government, the Shanghai Shen Kang Hospital Development Center and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.