Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Colombian Penitentiary Staff: An Interdisciplinary View of a High-Risk Occupation.

Cardiovascular risk factors have been measured under different conditions, there is some missing information related to specific occupations, such as penitentiary staff which due to their characteristics could have an increased cardiovascular risk.

Objective

To determine cardiovascular risk factors on military staff from penitentiary institutions in Santander-Colombia.

Methods

Cross-sectional study conducted with 182 workers. Anthropometric parameters, blood pressure, serum lipid profile, and glucose levels were measured. Univariate and bivariate analyses were carried out to establish differences between individuals.

Results

Anthropometric and biochemical measures showed that 71.3% participants were overweight or obese, 29.4% presented high blood pressure with increased levels of total cholesterol (27.5%), triglycerides (40.7%), glucose (9.3%), and 84.1% presented low levels of HDL cholesterol. Bivariate analysis found a negative correlation between BMI and HDL cholesterol (p < .05) and a positive correlation between BMI with triglycerides (p < .01), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (p < .01).

Conclusion

The studied military population presented increased levels of cardiovascular risk in comparison with a similar group in age, gender of nonmilitary individuals. However, it is important to carry out comparative studies between military staff in order to determine the prevalence and other risk predicting factors present in this specific population.