Cross-Sectional Associations between Body Mass Index and Hyperlipidemia among Adults in Northeastern China

There is evidence that body mass index (BMI) is closely related to hyperlipidemia. This study aimed to estimate the cross-sectional relationship between Body Mass Index (BMI) and hyperlipidemia.

We recruited 21,435 subjects (aged 18-79 years and residing in Jilin province, China) using the multistage stratified cluster random sampling method. Subjects were interviewed with a standardized questionnaire and physically examined. We analyzed the cross-sectional relationship between BMI and hyperlipidemia.

The prevalence of hyperlipidemia was 51.09% (52.04% in male and 50.21% in female). The prevalence of overweight and obesity was 31.89% and 6.23%, respectively. Our study showed that underweight (OR = 0.499, 95% CI: 0.426-0.585), overweight (OR = 2.587, 95% CI: 2.428-2.756), and obesity (OR = 3.614, 95% CI: 3.183-4.104) were significantly associated with hyperlipidemia (p < 0.001) in the age- and sex-adjusted logistic regression. After further adjusting for age, gender, region, district, ethnicity, education, marital status, main occupation, monthly family income per capita, smoking, drinking, exercise, central obesity, waist and hip, underweight (OR = 0.729, 95% CI: 0.616-0.864), overweight (OR = 1.651, 95% CI: 1.520-1.793), and obesity (OR = 1.714, 95% CI: 1.457-2.017) were independently associated with hyperlipidemia (p < 0.001). The restricted cubic spline model illustrated a nonlinear dose-response relationship between levels of BMI and the prevalence of hyperlipidemia (Pnonlinearity < 0.001).

Our study demonstrated that the continuous variance of BMI was significantly associated with the prevalence of hyperlipidemia.