Prevalence of metabolically healthy obesity and healthy overweight and the associated factors in southern Iran: A population-based cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Obesity is considered a major growing threat to public health which could negatively affect the quality of life. The current cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the population-based prevalence of metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) and healthy overweight (MHOW) and associated factors in southern Iran.

METHODS

Baseline data from the Pars Cohort Study was analyzed. Metabolically healthy participants were identified based on the definition of the American Heart Association for the metabolic syndrome. The prevalence of MHOW and MHO and their 95% confidence intervals were estimated. Poisson regression was applied for the calculation of prevalence ratios (PRs).

RESULTS

Gender- and age-standardized prevalences of MHOW and MHO were 6.3% (6.0%-6.6%) and 2.3% (2.1%-2.5%), respectively. The following factors were associated with being MHOW compared with those with normal weight: Being younger, female gender (1.31, 1.20-1.43), higher socioeconomic status, being noncurrent cigarette smoker (1.27, 1.11-1.45), low level of physical activity (1.14, 1.03-1.25), having normal overweight during adolescence, and overweight (1.35, 1.24-1.48) or obesity (1.68, 1.53-1.86) during young adulthood. We also found strong associations between MHO and younger age groups, female gender (2.87, 2.40-3.42), being married (1.57, 1.08-2.27), Fars ethnicity (1.25, 1.10-1.43), higher socioeconomic status, ever use of tobacco (1.14, 1.00-1.30), never use of opium (1.85, 1.19-2.86), lower physical activity (1.45, 1.20-1.72), being normal weight in 15-year body pictogram and being overweight (1.87, 1.59-2.20) or obese (3.20, 2.74-3.72) in 30-year body pictogram when considering those with normal weight or MHO.

CONCLUSION

Potentially modifiable factors including physical activity should be more emphasized. Furthermore, our study issued that it would be more reasonable that the prevention of unhealthy obesity be initiated before the development of MHO, where there are more protective factors and they could be more effective.