Risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease in college students

Abstract

Objective: Identify risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease in college students. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study conducted with 111 people aged between 20 and 47 years old in a university residence in the city of João Pessoa. Anthropometric measurements and blood pressure measurements were collected. In addition to descriptive statistics, Pearson's chi-square tests were applied to assess associations between categorical variables and Student's t test to assess differences between means. Results: The prevalence of hypertension in the sample was 28.83%. Elevated neck circumference was positively associated with males (p = 0.025). Among the measures of body adiposity, general obesity represented by the body mass index (p = 0.042) and the percentage of body fat (p = 0.021) demonstrated a greater association with hypertension. When comparing the means of anthropometric variables with blood pressure, it was observed that people with altered blood pressure also had an inadequate body mass index (p = 0.007), waist circumference (p = 0.003), neck circumference (p = 0.014) and waist/height ratio (p = 0.012), signaling risk for cardiovascular diseases. Conclusion: Among the risk factors associated with cardiovascular diseases, there was a high prevalence of hypertension, overweightness, high neck diameter in males, while measures of general adiposity were associated with increased blood pressure.