Prevalence of obesity and diabetes in coronary artery disease

Background-Obesity is a common public health problem reaching epidemic proportions in recent decades. Increased BMI imposes a pro- inflammatory state, releasing factors such as high sensitivity-C reactive protein which is strongly associated with plaque rupture and acute cardiovascular events. Also the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic level. Materials and methods-A total of 400 consecutive patients recruited in this cross sectional study from April 2009 to December 2009 who was candidate for coronary angiography. Baseline clinical characteristics and coronary angiography data collected. Data analysis performed using 2-sided independent-sample t-tests. Results-Out of 400 patients recruited in the study 253 were male. Obesity and diabetes observed in 65.7% and 32.5% of these patients respectively. Hypertension was more prevalent in obese patients (p=0.013) while dyslipidemia was not significantly different. The severity of coronary artery lesions were significantly associated with diabetes but not related to obesity (pvalue=0.0001 and 0.316 respectively). Conclusions-The main finding of this preliminary study was that diabetes is significantly related to severity of coronary artery disease and hypertension and hyperlipidemia is more prevalent in diabetic patients. Moreover, obesity is not significantly related to severity of coronary artery lesions.